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BEAUTY AND A BEASTLY ROLE
We spend time with Michelle Pfeiffer to talk about her latest role in Brit flick Stardust, as she chats about playing a witch, working with Sienna Miller and her own love of fairytales:
With her flawless complexion, sparkling blue eyes and lithe figure its difficult to believe that actress Michelle Pfeiffer turns 50 next year.
Somewhere along the way she seems to have discovered the secret of eternal youth. But far from being smug about her radiant looks, the down-to-earth actress says shes horrified at the current obsession with anti-ageing.
It never fails to amaze me the lengths some women will go in order to retain their youth, she says. And yet, there is a great myth that beautiful people lead beautiful lives. We all get hurt and damaged.
Fed up with Hollywoods preoccupation with image, the talented actress took a five-year break from making movies and concentrated instead on her favourite role - being mum to daughter Claudia Rose, 14, and son John Henry, 12, by her producer-writer husband David E Kelley.
I didnt want to go back to work unless it was something really interesting, she says of her extended hiatus from the big screen. I was enjoying being involved with the kids. There was a time I was just so busy with work.
I was never home, calls didnt get returned. I was always off here there and everywhere, but then children come along and it takes you completely by surprise how deeply your love runs for them, so the challenge for me was to find something that could tempt me away from what I loved doing which was being a mum.
The popular actress seems to have found that very challenge with her newest movie, Stardust, playing a deliciously wicked witch.
I thought if I dont do this Im going to regret it and I certainly didnt want anybody else doing this part, she says gleefully.
Directed by Layer Cakes Matthew Vaughan and with a screenplay co-written by Jonathan Rosss wife Jane Goldman, the film boasts a stellar cast including Robert de Niro, Clare Danes, Ricky Gervais and Peter OToole.
It tells the enchanting tale of a beautiful fallen star (Danes) who crashes into the mythical kingdom of Stormhold where she finds love with young Tristan (Charlie Cox) and danger in the form of wicked witch Lamia, (Pfeiffer) hell-bent on stealing her youth and beauty.
Though Michelle is not normally known for revealing her darker side on screen, the versatile actress jumped at the chance to play a villain.
Its fun to be bad, she smiles. You dont get a chance to be like that in real life, but what I really loved about Lamia was Matthews vision of what she was really about - societys obsession with youth and beauty and perfectionism.
He wanted to poke fun at that and see how far he could take it. I thought that was unusual for a male to be thinking of those issues and hes so young to be thinking about that
Regularly voted one of the worlds most beautiful women Michelle had to age 5,000 years in the film with the help of heavy prosthetics. The petite actress admits she was so alarmed by the final look she burst into tears.
I went into the bathroom and cried, she explains. It had taken six hours to apply the make up and it never occurred to me what that would feel like and the claustrophobia that would set in. My entire face and head and neck were encased in rubber and the only things left of me was the tip of my nose and my eyelashes. I panicked and thought how do I get out of this?
It took more than an hour to get it off. They had to peel it off and it had to be done slowly because if they went fast it could lift a layer off your skin.
Despite her hair-raising ordeals the actress says shes loving every minute of her return to the big screen.
I did one movie before this so it was getting my feet wet again and finding my way, she explains. And I really did feel that, as hard as Stardust was and how challenging, by the end of it I felt like all systems were firing and I remembered just what I loved about the work and how much it gives me pleasure.
Michelle, who also recently starred in the summer hit Hairspray, says she relishes the chance of finally showing her kids exactly what she does for a living.
Up until now they havent really seen anything Ive done, she laughs. They have been separated from the work, so I loved the fact I have two films that I could share with them and they could be a part of it.
It looks as if the three times Oscar-nominated actress is back for good now. Shes been inundated with new movie offers and her reputation as one of the industrys finest leading ladies has been set in stone - literally - as shes just been awarded her very own Hollywood Star on LAs prestigious Walk of Fame.
I was completely taken aback by the enormity of the event, she says, self-deprecatingly. I never thought when I first arrived in Hollywood that Id be there. I hoped, but I didnt think it would happen so it was a very big honour to be included in such an old Hollywood tradition.
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