August 2007 | blackfilm.com | features | STARDUST | An Interview with Michelle Pfeiffer

STARDUST | An Interview with Michelle Pfeiffer
By Ifé Thomas

August 6, 2007

In Paramount Pictures’ latest summer release, Stardust, Michelle Pfeiffer stars as 5,000-year old Lamia, a bitter witch in a covenant of sisters, who obsessively search for the heart of a fallen star that will give them eternal youth. The smart fairytale, directed by Matthew Vaughn, has her playing a villain for the second time this summer, following her bad girl turn in the musical adaptation of Hairspray. Pfeiffer talks to BF.com about aging in Hollywood, how it felt to look 5,000 years old, and why Robert De Niro makes a great transvestite.

So, you play Lamia the witch in this film and you’re 5,000 years old! Can you describe how the physical process of actually becoming the character was for you? Because you’re actually aging throughout the film, so you’re not that old the whole time…

Michelle Pfeiffer: Initially, it was six-hour and it was just monster make-up--I looked like a monster. I had these brow bones out to here, and jowls down to here, and we decided that was too far because we wanted her to be human. We didn’t want her to look like a monster, so we kept dialing it back and dialing it back, and then we ended up as hideous as we could push it, but still retaining some sort of humanness to her. Then it was just working back from there and deciding how we would work out those stages of when she began to age again. We actually had many more stages, but because of the schedule it was very complex…it was really limited so we had to kind of pair that back a little bit.

I think we all underestimated what it meant to have full prosthetics on. I don’t think anyone involved from the production end to the actors…none of us had done them before. So it was a really sharp learning curve for everybody, but we survived and we got the make-up down to four and a half hours a day when we were really speedy.

What happens to your ego throughout this?

MP:You just have to check it at the door. The funniest thing that would happen is that after awhile, I would honestly just forget that I looked how I looked! So, I’d be hanging around the set, waiting for the set up and talking to people, and I would notice them kind of looking at me with this look on their face. (laughs) Then I’d remember how I looked and nobody could get used it. It just was unsettling for everyone to be around me…but no one ever disagreed with me! (laughter)

How was it to look at your self in the mirror?

MP: Initially, it was unsettling to say the least. I think the hardest (phase) was when I was sort of half aging. That one was really disturbing to me…because you could actually see how your face was actually beginning to show some of the signs, but the other side wasn’t. You actually had a comparison…

Your character is completely driven by her thirst for eternal youth. As an actress in Hollywood the pressure to stay youthful and look a certain way seems to have an underlying parallel there…

Not only as an actress in Hollywood, but as a woman in general. I think it’s much more global then our business. Certainly we are chronicled, which kind of makes it harder for us. We (actors) have to actually look at ourselves and scrutinize ourselves and the aging process over the years in a really unnatural way, as if aging for a woman weren’t hard enough. Then, it’s like then you add that on top of it. So, yeah so I certainly know what that feels like and what kind of pressure that is. But, what interested me, and what interested (director) Matthew about this character was (to say), let’s just really turn it on it’s head and shine a light on this, and poke fun at how absurd it’s become. It really is a metaphor for when I look around and I see what women are doing to themselves…in everyway with fillers, plumpers, surgery, and eating disorders. It’s just become so grotesque. We really have lost sight of what is beautiful—literally.

If you could go back to your 20s or 30s again would you?

MP: No…you mean would I go back there or to look like I did?

I mean to look like you did. What if you could take a pill and say I want to look like I did back then…

MP: I would probably want to look how I looked when I was probably…35. I feel like you kind of come together as a woman. I think I was happier then I’d ever been because I became a mother, I met my husband, I think that showed on my face, and there’s a certain kind of maturity that happens with the face. You’re not a girl anymore…I like that time for most women. It’s my favorite.

Do you enjoy fairytales as stories, especially since you’re a mom? Are you a fan of that genre?

MP: I am not a big fairytale person. It’s not the kind of reading I would gravitate toward. If I were reading I would pick out a biography or something like that, but my kids certainly love all of that. Actually, (this film) has been great for me because it’s introduced me to the world of fairytales, which is something I kind of missed out on as a little kid and when I was younger. So I’ve been able to discover all these great new stories that I wasn’t aware of.

We all got a kick out of the Robert De Niro cross-dressing scenes…

MP:Oh I loved that! It was hysterically funny. Honestly, that was probably one of the biggest selling points of me doing the movie is when I read that scene, and I knew Bob De Niro was doing it, I thought this is history! This is history in the making and I’ve got to be a part of this.

So what’s next for you?

MP:Who knows? I never have a plan. I don’t know until it arrives on my desk and that’s it. I’m looking at some things though…