Michelle Pfeiffer \u2014Olivia Malone<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
Michelle Pfeiffer<\/a> is one of our most fearless actors, but she doesn\u2019t think of herself that way. Admittedly, fearlessness is hard to define, more a you-know-it-when-you-see-it quality than a goal you can shoot for. But Pfeiffer doesn\u2019t believe she was ever fearless, especially in the early days. \u201cOne thing I didn\u2019t like about my work is that I would watch other actors who took all of these risks, and I always felt like I was playing a little safe,\u201d she says over tea in New York City. In fact, in one of her earliest big movies\u2014opposite Al Pacino<\/a> in the 1983 Scarface<\/em><\/a>\u2014she felt panicky the whole time. \u201cI was really young, and I was working alongside so many seasoned actors. I was terrified every second.\u201d<\/p>\n But anyone who has been watching carefully, through a career spanning more than 45 years, can see that Pfeiffer has always been a quiet risk taker, a performer more intent on rooting out the truth of a character than courting easy likability. This was as true in her early roles\u2014as the disillusioned but self-determined Mafia housewife Angela de Marco in Married to the Mob<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>or the grimly funny cokehead ice princess Elvira in Scarface<\/em>\u2014as it is in the roles she chooses today, two of which are now landing almost simultaneously. In Taylor Sheridan\u2019s<\/a> six-part Paramount+ <\/a>drama The Madison, <\/em>Pfeiffer plays Stacy Clyburn, a hardcore (and very wealthy) New Yorker drawn to the mountains of Montana as she grieves for her husband, Kurt Russell\u2019s<\/a> Preston, whose spirit lives on for her in that landscape. And in Apple TV\u2019s Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>produced by Pfeiffer\u2019s husband David E. Kelley<\/a>, she plays Shayanne Millet, a woman who has struggled to raise a child by herself, Elle Fanning\u2019s Margo, and now sees her daughter headed for similar hardship.<\/p>\n Pfeiffer\u2019s early performances could have been given only by someone who doesn\u2019t know how much power she has, a special gift of certain great actors. And now, at 67, she\u2019s finding that there are good roles for women her age that hadn\u2019t presented themselves before. So when Kelley gave her the Rufi Thorpe novel on which Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles<\/em> <\/a>is based, she was intrigued. \u201cDavid handed me the book and very casually said, \u2018There\u2019s a part in here, and everybody thinks you should play it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Shayanne says what she thinks and wears what she wants, essentially a wardrobe of spike-heeled boots and tiny leather jackets in a rainbow of hues. She used to be a Hooters<\/a> waitress. Now she works at a Bloomingdale\u2019s in Fullerton, Calif., and her daughter Margo is building her own life as a grownup. A student at the local community college, Margo is a good writer and a star pupil, such that she attracts the not exactly wholesome attentions of one of her professors (Michael Angarano). He and Margo have an affair; when she becomes pregnant, he wants nothing to do with the baby. Margo weighs her options and decides to keep the child, only to realize she can\u2019t make enough money to support herself and the baby. Her solution? Becoming an OnlyFans<\/a> creator, a secret she tries, but ultimately fails, to keep from her mother. Their relationship is the series\u2019 heartbeat: Shayanne doesn\u2019t want her daughter to make the same mistakes she did, though both need to reframe their ideas of what a mistake really is.<\/p>\n Pfeiffer loved Shayanne from the start. \u201cI know Fullerton,\u201d she says. \u201cI grew up in Orange County. I know this woman. In some ways, I\u2019ve been longing to play this part.\u201d She also saw the story\u2019s authenticity; its characters\u2019 predicaments feel lived in. Margo and Shayanne\u2019s lives become more complicated when Shayanne\u2019s semi-estranged old flame, and Margo\u2019s father, retired wrestler Jinx (Nick Offerman<\/a>), re-enters the picture\u2014just as Shayanne becomes engaged to a reliable, straitlaced guy (Greg Kinnear). \u201cEven though each of these characters is eccentric in a different way, I feel like they\u2019re all grounded. We\u2019ve all met these people here and there. I just loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n Pfeiffer in ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ \u2014Allyson Riggs\u2014AppleTV+<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n In person, Pfeiffer is both mildly intimidating and a little goofy. She\u2019s wearing a black silk blouse and dark, elegant trousers, plus a pair of enormous yet delicate gold hoop earrings: they have presence, as she does, but they\u2019re also somehow discreet and understated, as she is. Her carriage is both casual and regal. She\u2019s also the kind of person who, once the recorder is off and the notebook is closed, will ask to see pictures of your pets. She has a dog and a cat herself.<\/p>\n Her demeanor is so generally affable that it\u2019s easy to forget how many genuinely fantastic performances she\u2019s given. She\u2019s been great in movies nearly everyone has heard of (Scarface, Batman Returns, Dangerous Liaisons), <\/em>but also in pictures that don\u2019t show up in the average Letterboxd account (The Russia House, Love Field, Natica Jackson, <\/em>I Could Never Be Your Woman<\/em><\/a>). <\/em>You could program a complete film retrospective with \u201cforgotten\u201d Pfeiffer performances alone.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s impossible to identify a single explanation for her longevity, the ease with which she shifts between comedy and drama\u2014and sometimes blurs the lines between them\u2014hasn\u2019t hurt. Pfeiffer is circumspect about her gifts as a comic actor. \u201cI don\u2019t really understand it,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I remember [film producer] Marty Bregman saying to me, \u2018You know, you have a funny bone.<\/em>\u2019 Which I guess is different. I sort of understood what he meant.\u201d Yet her knack for comedy\u2014even the kind that isn\u2019t ha-ha funny\u2014is key to her sly, effervescent portrayal of Shayanne, a woman who both yearns for security and wants to have fun. She\u2019s engaged to Kinnear\u2019s upstanding churchgoer, yet she goes to great lengths to pretend she doesn\u2019t love to drink and gamble: when she does let loose, her sailor-on-shore-leave joy is something to behold. And the way Shayanne literally holds her infant grandson at arm\u2019s length\u2014as if she could somehow erase Margo\u2019s \u201cmistake\u201d by refusing to cradle him close\u2014is both piercing and funny.<\/p>\n One of the joys of Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles <\/em>is the way it allows its characters to recontextualize their own life choices, an idea that\u2019s not lost on Pfeiffer. \u201cDisappointments often lead you down the path you\u2019re supposed to be on,\u201d she says. One of the things she loves about Margo <\/em>is that \u201cit\u2019s so much like real life. All of these characters are really grappling with who they thought they would become, vs. who they are and where they find themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>