Michelle Pfeiffer: “I don’t regret what I gave up”

There is something akin to defenselessness in her expression. Thin, as if drawn with a sharpened stylus, features. Consisting of sharp corners, nervous triangles … Small funny wrinkles – as if from excessive facial expressions. But almost no facial expressions. The corners of the mouth are raised as if ready to smile. Huge, transparent, as if filled with tears eyes. But her eyes are green. The color of hope.

Michelle Pfeiffer brushes the fluff off her femininely cut jeans (“Yes, jeans are my uniform, I have 15 of them!” – admits this carpet star and queen of the neckline), rolls up the sleeves of a floral print shirt (“I don’t know at all, who is the designer… No, I know! Sienna Miller. I remember because I’m a colleague!”) and prepares to answer my questions. But now, when I see her up close, in a San Francisco waterfront restaurant with plank floors and plank tables, where they cook local marine life and classic Montana ribs, in a place where, this afternoon, it’s just us and two clerks, animatedly discussing something at their table, I completely leave the feeling that I am in a responsible interview with an actress from the Hollywood “A list”, an unconditional star, a guarantor of multi-million dollar box office … Now it does not surprise me at all that one day in Barcelona, when Pfeiffer and her make-up artist went for a walk (“of a historical and cultural bias,” she says), fans mistook her brilliant companion for an actress … She is clearly trying to be invisible, not to attract attention, not to impose herself on the world. Where does such scrupulousness come from?

MP: So I look like! Well, there was. In the sense that it doesn’t matter now. And it was similar. Gait. The mouth is big. They even teased me at school – they said that I would be good in the role of Howard Duck. By the way, I wasn’t particularly offended. In the end, subtly noted. And you know what else… I had a pretty strict upbringing. Mom did not work – four children. Dad installed air conditioners, a little bit of used refrigerators. And so I asked him one day, I was about eleven, if he would like to get rich and have some truly luxurious car. He replied that he would like us to travel, to see the world, but he does not want a car. Because to have a luxury car is to boast of wealth. And boasting of wealth is a bad form. Well, I got this look. In a way, she is wealth. I don’t want it to matter. Especially since this is a double-edged sword. One director told me at the audition that he would not take me to the role, because I was, as it were, too good-looking. Then I somehow convinced him, and the producer helped. And on the set, he kept looking at the camera and saying: “No, too beautiful. No matter how hard he tries, nothing comes out!” Hearing this, I tell you, is not very pleasant. For a while I tried to fight the prejudice in connection with this appearance of mine. In ordinary life – no cosmetics. I went to auditions, to interviews almost in men’s clothes. After all, this is an objective reality: a seemingly successful appearance is not only wealth, but also a limitation. I don’t see anything unambiguous in the world at all. Everything is very multidimensional.

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Is this effect also from long years of therapy?

MP: Rather from long years of life! No, I’m serious. I am in my fifties, and this age has had a liberating effect on me. After all, everyone knows that I am over fifty, and I am no exception: I know that this is already an age. But I also know that age is an advantage. I’m lucky to get old. Not everyone lives to old age. And I live. I don’t think you have to look young forever. You have to look good, yes. But not young, but himself.

And yet, what else has therapy taught you?

MP: For what I know about myself. For example, that I like to understand “why” and know “why”. I like to understand myself – because this is the only way to understand what is really going on around. By and large, this is why I decided to go to a psychoanalyst and went regularly for many years. Now – not regularly, but still it is important to me. Probably also because I have the experience of belonging to a sect – and this is not easy to get rid of. I was probably about nineteen years old, I had just arrived in Los Angeles, I was looking for small roles, a way to earn money, and they quickly found me, lonely, scared and insecure. Then I realized that the ideology of the sect was rather comical – a mixture of some kind of metaphysics-mysticism with a cult of vegetarianism. They pulled quite a lot of money out of me, but it doesn’t matter. The trouble was in myself – I was painfully insecure and needed guidance, even control. Later, in order to understand what happened to me, I read studies about sects and found that, it turns out, not just people who are flawed in some way, but those who want to understand the world, who have an intellectual and spiritual thirst. Thick-skinned victims do not become… Which sounded to me even somehow complimentary. But then my classmate at the acting school saved me, we got married. I got rid of one control, but soon discovered that I still needed it – the next control. Now Peter was in charge of me (Peter Horton, actor and director, Pfeiffer’s first husband. – Approx. ed.). One day, towards the end of our marriage, my parents came to visit me. And I had to give some kind of interview. Dad later said that he was horrified: Peter literally instructed me what I should say, and I repeated after him as if charmed. This is what psychoanalysis revealed – I unconsciously craved control. And behind this thirst was fear: when you are afraid of the world, do not trust it, it is important for you to approve some guarantees of security. Psychotherapy taught me to calmly accept the unknown, the uncertainty of the future.

Your daughter Claudia is eighteen today. And years ago you decided to adopt her, knowing that you do not suffer from infertility …

MP: I decided because I wanted to have a family, but I was convinced that I would not have an ordinary family. I came to the conclusion that I, apparently, just not for marriage. I separated from my first husband and it was a painful divorce. We got married very, very young and decided to leave not because of mutual hatred or irritation, but because it became clear that we were no longer on the road, as if we had grown out of each other. And neither hatred nor irritation compensated for the pain of the breakdown of relationships. After all, it often happens that way – you already hate it so much that you are even glad to leave everything in the past. We didn’t have it. As I remember now – Peter helped me load things into the car when I left our house … In a word, I thought that it was unlikely that I would marry again – there are people who leave one relationship, enter another, this is a serious relationship, but they do not involve marriage. I lived just like that. But a child is different. I wanted to have a child. And yet I did not dare. I wanted to understand whether my reasons, my condition are correct. I told only two people about this – my lawyer Barry Kirsch and producer Marty Bregman. Both of them are something like Los Angeles parents for me, they know me both from the best and from the worst side … And both said: you cannot help but love her, you must do it. To my amazement! And then I met David (the current husband of the actress. – Approx. ed.), And he proposed to me. Claudia’s adoption process was already underway, and I still didn’t know how to tell him about it. But at some point I decided: I will tell, and at the same time I will find out whether he is an adult or an infantile young man. Turned out to be an adult. He accepted me along with my decision. And again I was shocked, but I realized: I made the wrong choice more than once, but I chose the right man. Absolutely, irreproachably correct.

By wrong choice, do you mean your famous failures? You famously turned down a role in The Silence of the Lambs, which went to Jodie Foster and made her a star. You turned down a role in Basic Instinct and Sharon Stone became the star. You abandoned Sleepless in Seattle, and Meg Ryan has become the queen of romantic comedy. Finally, you abandoned Thelma and Louise, and the film became a real classic. Don’t you regret?

MP: But I cleared the way for amazing actresses! How much longer would you have to wait for the huge, incredible talent of Sharon Stone to be revealed? I played everything I needed to play. And I still think The Silence of the Lambs is too ambiguous … I remember one episode: when I was just trying to become an actress, I just arrived in Los Angeles, one new acquaintance, she was already an elderly actress, told me: find the strength to refuse the role Not thinking about missing out on work is a show of strength. And first of all to myself … No, I do not regret my refusals.

Your son was born literally a year after Claudia was adopted. How are your kids doing?

MP: I had concerns about this, I will not hide. But the fact – even this question, about their possible inequality, never arose. In our family, everyone is equal … you know, in some higher sense of the word. Between children and parents there is always a process of mutual education. A small child will never be what we imagined him to be. And this can only be accepted. Without my children, I would not have learned much. For example, that there are situations when a confrontation is seemingly inevitable, and you choose to join, not to resist: I kept fighting with their sitting on the Internet, and now I myself disappear into it! And without them, I probably would have given up drawing. I started painting in Italy, on the set of Hawkwoman. Actually there were few shootings, a lot of free time. And the incredible beauty around, and for the first time I left my continent, to Europe … I was so shocked by this beauty, there were so many feelings and I so wanted to release them, to set them free. I drew. And the same with children – they awaken so many feelings in you … that … in general, I took a course in drawing and painting and now I draw a lot. I paint in oils.

What do you write? Landscapes?

MP: What are you, no! People. Faces. And landscapes and still lifes for nothing. Even the word is unpleasant to me: both in English and in French, it sounds somehow lifeless. Nature morte – dead nature. Still life – frozen life. And I love living life.