by Nathaniel R
Michelle behind the scenes of her THR photoshoot (from her Instagram acct)
Though we've been obsessed with Michelle Pfeiffer for our whole lives we haven't had much occassion to revel in that love given her infrequent appearances on screens in the past two decadess. At last, with her kids in their 20s and her unisex fragrance line Henry Rose fully established and successful, she finally appears to be ready to act frequently again. French Exit (2020) was an excellent warm up to return to leading lady status and she's absolutely acing the great role of the influential Betty Ford in The First Lady (2022) and receiving 'best-in-show' raves for her work. We're crossing our fingers for an Emmy nod.
What's next?
There are rumors she will be part of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis (2024?) and she's already shot a reprisal of her role as Janet Van Dyne (the original "Wasp") in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (due February 17th, 2023). She had so little screentime in her previous outtings in this role that we're hoping a miracle occured and they realized during production that they had MICHELLE PFEIFFER on the set and beefed up her part. There's sadly been no production movement on the delicious sounding thriller Turn of Mind which was supposed to star Pfeiffer and Annette Bening so we assume that project is dead. But she's just signed for another role. She'll lead something called Wild Four O'Clocks which will be a directorial debut from the screenwriter / novelist Peter Craig...
Craig has mostly co-written blockbuster franchise type films like Top Gun Maverick, The Batman, and a couple of The Hunger Games and written three noirish novels. That's a strange background to lead to directing a drama which has been described as being about a 'larger than life' woman suddenly tasked with raising her two heartbroken estranged grandsons when their father is sent to prison. But you never know with directorial debuts! We'll hope for greatness. Pfeiffer too often ends up in projects where she ends up running absolute circles around everything else, rather than having to rise to the demands of greatness around her
The latest picture from her exceptional Instagram page. Still shocked that she took to it given her shyness for so many decades.
She's only made a few films with first-time directors and two of them didn't pan out all that well (People Like Us, Personal Effects). On the other hand her all time most celebrated performance in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) was for a first-time director, Steve Kloves. Sadly Kloves, despite tremendous novice skill behind the camera, didn't end up with a real directing career (he hasn't helmed a movie in almost 30 years!) but ended up with a lucrative career writing franchise blockbusters.
Peter Craig is, at least, no stranger to female movie stars. His mother is Sally Field (!!!) and he's co-written recent projects for Jennifer Lopez (The Mother due this year) and Sandra Bullock (last year's Unforgiveable).