Michelle Pfeiffer talks scents
Michelle Pfeiffer has a restless streak. You can spot it in her widely disparate choice of acting roles. She was steamy as “Catwoman,” wrenchingly vulnerable in “Dangerous Liaisons” and glamorously debauched in “Scarface.” She was twice exiled, as the social pariah Ruth Madoff in “The Wizard of Lies” and now as an uptown grandee gone broke in “French Exit,” which arrived in theaters this month.
But at 62, Pfeiffer has stayed put long enough to bring up two children with her husband, writer and producer David E. Kelley, and embark on new projects: She plays Betty Ford on the forthcoming Showtime series “The First Lady,” and she has taken on the unlikely role of beauty entrepreneur.
Two years ago, she started Henry Rose, a line of gender-neutral perfumes, home fragrances and salves that bear broodingly evocative names like Fog, Last Light and Queens and Monsters. The newest scent, Windows Down, a bergamot and citrustinged addition, hints at the more free-spirited, candidly fun-loving facets of Pfeiffer’s personality.
Recently, she dropped her reserve to talk about the challenges of entrepreneurship and of playing a genteelly impoverished society queen.
Q: I’ve read that you sometimes wear a fragrance to help you slip into character. Was that the case with “French Exit”?
A: At the time we were shooting, we were playing around with a floral. I wore it. I thought my character Frances would be a floral person.
Q: But your character is no sweet-scented dowager.
A: As we like to say, this is not your grandmother’s floral.
Q: Which part of you related to Frances?
A: I don’t always know why I respond to a character. But I found her incredibly moving. Her tragedy is that of someone insulated by wealth who has never learned real coping skills. When she has no money anymore, she doesn’t really know who she is.
Q: How did the concept for your latest fragrance come into your head?
A: I was driving and I rolled my windows down and felt the warm summer air. I felt untethered. It reminded me of getting my driver’s license when I was 16, that feeling of, you know, just letting go and letting life lead me. The older we get, we just don’t do that.
Q: Was this scent conceived as a response to an oppressive year?
A: No. But it is optimistic. Its introduction just happens to coincide with all of us slowly coming out and the feeling that we’re wanting to start over.
Q: These fragrances vary broadly in character. Which are you most drawn to?
A: I tend toward the darker and richer woody vanilla earthy ones. Torn, my first and a go-to, has a whisper of something spicy, a little bit woody. My favorites are the ones that are complex.
Q: Celebrity fragrances are said to be a difficult sell. Yet you introduced one without even placing your name on the label.
A: I was cautioned at the start that celebrity fragrances were not doing well, that people were not trusting them. It was important to me, because this isn’t a licensing deal, that the brand would be able to stand on its own, that all the ingredients would be listed on the label. I didn’t want to develop something that relied on my face or celebrity.