Oscar History
Film Bitch History
Welcome

The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)

Follow TFE on Substackd

Powered by Squarespace
COMMENTS

 

Keep TFE Strong

We're looking for 500... no 390 SubscribersIf you read us daily, please be one.  

I ♥ The Film Experience

THANKS IN ADVANCE

What'cha Looking For?
Subscribe
« Open (Sick Bed) Thread | Main | True Blood 5.1 "Turn! Turn! Turn!" »
Wednesday
Jun132012

Twins: Michelle's Blonde Brood

We're celebrating twins daily at 2:22 pm while we're in Gemini

Gratuitous Anecdote! I've always loved to draw and in my high school years it's what people knew me for. I won the High School's Departmental Award in Art (Do they still have departmental awards? Hell, do they still have art classes?) in that heady stretch of graduation celebrations where they keep honoring star pupils. One day early in my senior year or maybe it was at the end of my junior year, the art teacher asked one of the students to pose for the class. A guy I didn't know volunteered and I felt totally inspired. Instant crushing helps. He loved my drawing and we became fast friends after the class. The first day I went to his house after school I was stunned to see a whole house full of doppelgangers. He had one of those families where virtually every kid looked like a clone of the previous one and since he was the oldest they were all mini hims. And, yes, there was an actual set of twins to drive the point home. Have you ever met an identical family like that? It's kind of freaky.

Michelle Pfeiffer's first scene in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. She's buried in offspring

I flashed back to that memory while screening The Witches of Eastwick for its 25th anniversary week and smiling at Michelle Pfeiffer's introduction where a whole stream of authentically blonde children follow after like a trail of baby ducklings. There are two sets of siblings amongst these child actors who never worked again (perhaps they were locales?). The three towhead girls were played by sisters, surname "Ditmar" -- I couldn't find any information about them as they never acted again but if they're not triplets, there's a twin set in there!

Michelle Pfeiffer is so fertile ...onscreen. In real life the movie legend has only two children but onscreen her progeny number two dozen plus. For such a legendary beauty, Pfeiffer was never scared of screen parenting despite the widespread belief that you risk aging yourself out of leading lady roles when you start playing moms onscreen. La Pfeiffer didn't just dip her toe in to test the water but dove in headfirst becoming a mom onscreen for the first time in The Witches of Eastwick (she was only 28 years old while filming) not once not twice not thrice but six times over. And at the end of the movie Sukie Ridgemont had even had a seventh child, her first boy.

Daryl: Sukie, at last we meet.
Sukie: Hi. Hello. How are you?
Daryl: Let me look at those eyes of yours. My! You are a fertile little creature, aren't you?
Sukie: [uncomfortable laughter] Thank you... I think."
              -The Devil meets Sukie in The Witches of Eastwick

 

Pfeiffer's 27 Screen Children in the order I tend to remember them
Fertile indeed. 

  • Alison Lohman - White Oleander (2002)
  • Jonathan Jackson & Cory Buck - The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
  • Saoirse Ronan - I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)
  • Six Blonde Girls (Michele Sincavage, Nicol Sincavage, Heather Coleman, Carolyn Ditmars, Cynthia Ditmars and Christine Ditmars)- The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
  • Claire Danes - To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996)
  • Brittany Snow - Hairspray (2007)
  • Anthony J Nici - Married to the Mob (1988)
  • Katharine Towne - What Lies Beneath (2000)
  • Ryan Merriman & Michael McElroy - The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
  • Chlöe Grace Moretz - Dark Shadows (2012)
  • Alex D Linz - One Fine Day (1996)
  • Casey Boersma & Dylan Boersma (twins!), Daniel Henson & Jake Sandqiv (1999)
  • Colleen Rennison & Tara Blanchard - The Story of Us (1999)
  • Chase McKenzie Bebak - I Am Sam (2001)
  • infant - The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
  • Elisabeth Moss and Michelle Williams - A Thousand Acres (1997)
  • infant - Amazon Women on the Moon (1987, her scene is a hospital delivery sequence if I recall correctly?) 

the only one I haven't seen

  • Spencer Hudson - Personal Effects (2009) 

 upcoming


 

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

Reader Comments (7)

If I remember correctly in Dark Shadows Chloe Grace Moretz was Pfeiffer's daughter while Gulliver McGrath was Jonny Lee Miller's son. Althopugh I completely understand the need to forget that Grace Moretz was in that film sharing the screen with the great Pfeiffer.

June 13, 2012 | Unregistered Commenterca

Is Personal Effects the only Pfeiffer ever you haven't seen Nathaniel, or just the only one where she has children? Have you finished Moore, Kidman, or Streep as well?

June 13, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterJohn T

She had two daughters in "A Thousand Acres," played by none other than Michelle Williams and Elisabeth Olsen (Mad Men's Peggy).

June 13, 2012 | Unregistered Commenterlylee

sorry, I meant Elisabeth Moss, not Olsen.

June 13, 2012 | Unregistered Commenterlylee

Whatever happened to the cute model?

...I know, I'm actually drifting FROM movie talk, astonishingly, but I love childhood crushes!

June 13, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterBeau

The kid who got stolen in Deep End of the Ocean ended up on Pretty Little Liars and then on TMZ for a DUI. Fun Fact.

June 13, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterBia

ca --oops. have i already forgotten that much of the movie? Now that I think about it you're totally right! (his mother was the ghost.)

john t -- i have seen every Pfeiffer except personal effects, a couple of the really early tv movies that are hard to find and that charlie chan dragon queen movie. I have not seen everything Streep though i'm not missing much. Kidman is a weak area because I didn't even like her when she first began in the movies and when i was starting to like her she still made a lot of movies i wasn't interested in (hello The Human Stain) and so on. The closest i've come to completism with someone with a hefty hefty body of work is Julianne Moore. I believe I'm missing only that "Shelter" movie which was never released, "Being Flynn" and a couple of cameo roles.

June 14, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterNathaniel R
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.