Michelle Pfeiffer biography 2022
Michelle Pfeiffer biography
Michelle Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California, on April 29, 1958. Parents Dick and Donna moved the Pfeiffer family to Midway City and Fountain Valley.
With an older brother Rick and 2 younger sisters, Dedee and Lori, Michelle was considered the tough kid and even the school bully rather than the fragile beauty we would imagine her to be.
While attending Fountain Valley High School, she entered the workforce by working as a salesperson at a local clothing store.
After graduating high school in 1976, Michelle left to study court reporting at Golden West College while working as a cashier at a local grocery store.
Unsatisfied with her studies or her ambition, Michelle decided she wanted a change and decided on an acting career.
She knew that beauty pageants would be a good place to start as they would give her recognition and the chance to meet an agent, so she entered and won the Miss Orange County beauty pageant in 1978. Michelle ditched her court reporting classes for acting classes and made her debut on another one-line screen of the Fantasy Island series.
After an appearance in the film Falling In Love Again, she was cast in the sequel to Grease.
Although the film was a flop, those who saw it took to the new actress. She got her big break when she was cast as Al Pacino's wife in Scarface. In fact, director Brian De Palma didn't want to give her the role until he saw her in person during casting.
While her career got off to a flying start, her personal life saw some turmoil when she became involved with a cult in the early '80s. Director Peter Horton, her classmate during acting classes, began dating her in California and eventually rescued her from the cult's clutches Horton and Michelle were married in 1981.
After a few roles in minor films, Michelle starred alongside Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Jack Nicholson in the crazy The Witches of Eastwick. She slowly started to get noticed, especially after the title role in the made-for-TV movie Natica Jackson. But just as the 80s drew to a close, Michelle began working non-stop, starring in 1988's Married to the Mob, Tequila Sunrise, and Dangerous Liaisons, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1989, Michelle turned heads, and critics noted her role as lounge singer Susie Diamond in The Fabulous Baker Boys.
Her stunning role earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, the New York Film Critics Award, the Chicago Film Festival Award, and the Golden Globe Award, all for Best Actress in 1990.
After her divorce from Horton in 1990, Michelle didn't even have time to think about being single - mainly because she rarely was, what with dating Fisher Stevens, John Malkovich, and Michael Keaton.
Her title as one of the most versatile actresses today can be proven by the variety of films she has made: a Russian woman in the 1990s The Russia House; a sullen waitress in 1991's Frankie & Johnny; Catwoman in 1992's Batman Returns; a Jacqueline Kennedy-obsessed housewife in Love Field; an inner-city teacher in 1995's Dangerous Minds; an ambitious single mother in One Fine Day (which she also produced); a fairy queen in 1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream with Calista Flockhart; and a haunted wife in 2000's What Lies Beneath, opposite Harrison Ford.
Michelle has a reserved spot on People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list, having appeared on the list at least 4 times, and TV producer David E. Kelley gets to see the classic beauty daily.
Michelle married Ally McBeal and The Practice producer in 1993. The couple has an adopted daughter, Claudia Rose, and a son, John Henry. Michelle had proven in her 2 decades of acting that she was still as talented as she was when Michelle donned that latex catsuit in Batman Returns, and she still knows how to spin better than ever before.
last updated October 2022
