HIGH-VIS JACKETS
DENIM JACKETS ARE ALL OVER THE HIGH STREET RIGHT NOW. EMMA JOHNSON TALKS YOU THROUGH THE STYLES
PURISTS will tell you that it is not a patch on the original, and granted it doesn’t enjoy the benefit of John Travolta in black leather, (Maxwell Caulfield’s Michael Carrington is no Danny Zuko) but I am a sucker for Grease 2.
I love it because it introduced me to my earliest and most enduring girl crush – Michelle Pfeiffer.
Playing Stephani Zinone in the 1982 film, the 23-year-old – then a little-known actress with just a few TV credits to her name – was luminous.
All chewing gum, big eyes and even bigger earrings, as leader of the Pink Ladies, she was utterly entrancing, just the sort of cool girl my brace-wearing 13-year-old self dreamed of one day being.
Then I saw Scarface and my love for the Californian was sealed. Her turn as the girlfriend of Al Pacino’s gangster, Tony Montana, is one of cinema’s most iconic female performances.
And my goodness how she looks in that movie – the barely there, bias-cut silk slips, the diamonds, THAT white suit and without question the best fringe since hairdressing began – is it any wonder that designers repeatedly return to her Elvira Hancock character as a reference point in their collections?
In the years since, Michelle has racked up a host of unforgettable roles: singing atop a grand piano as Susie in the Fabulous Baker Boys; helping Cher, and Susan Sarandon see off Jack Nicholson’s devil in The Witches of Eastwick; as Catwoman in Batman Returns and as the most beautiful diner waitress you have ever seen, playing alongside Al Pacino once more in the classic Frankie and Johnny.
She even managed to make an over-sized leather blazer look good while playing a teacher in Dangerous Minds and, at almost 50, Michelle eclipsed ‘it’ girl Sienna Miller, then 24, in the fantasy film Stardust, despite the fact she was supposed to be playing a wizened old witch.
But lately Michelle Pfeiffer has been missing from the movies. In fact she hasn’t made one since 2013’s The Family – a not-exactly-great outing with Robert de Niro.
But now she is back and pictured on the front cover of Interview magazine, aged, 58, she looks as stunning as ever.
The cover –her first in 30 years – comes because Michelle, who is married to TV producer David E Kelley, the man helping to smash down barriers for older actresses with his small screen hit Big Little Lies, is set to appear in Mother! by Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky later this year as well as Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express.
And she will play Bernie Madoff’s wife Ruth alongside De Niro as Madoff in an HBO series about the fraudster.
It’s possible Michelle’s youthful visage in the Interview photos is down to a little more than clever lighting and comsetics but I don’t care. Nor does men’s mag Maxim who declared her “still sexy as hell”.
‘Sexy as hell’ at nearly 60 and a talented actress to boot, my 13-year-old self had good taste in girl crushes.