The 20 best Michelle Pfeiffer films – ranked!
20. Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Kenneth Branagh’s all-star revival of the classic Agatha Christie murder mystery gives us a traditional exotic crosssection of high society (with picturesque servants and bits of rough) on board the snowed-in Orient Express, on which someone has been whacked. The film has Pfeiffer in one of her latecareer grande dame roles: the manhunting American widow Mrs Hubbard, which she plays a little softer than Lauren Bacall, who had had the role in the 1974 version. Pfeiffer sang the melancholy Never Forget over the end credits, with lyrics by Branagh.
19. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)
The sole Shakespeare on the Pfeiffer CV (it is a shame that she hasn’t done more, maybe Gertrude or Volumnia). At any rate, she is a gentle and serenely charming Titania in Michael Hoffman’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which updates the action to 19th-century Tuscany. She is queenly and self-possessed, with a British accent that puts the brakes on her line readings. She nicely plays off the pouting petulance of Rupert Everett’s Oberon and there is something sweetly romantic in her magical infatuation with Bottom, played rather selfeffacingly by Kevin Kline.
18. Hairspray (2007)
Pfeiffer returned to Hollywood after a five-year family break with this film (and Stardust, below) and it signalled a new career phase of character parts, comedy roles and wicked-witch turns. Here, in a remake of John Waters’s Hairspray of 1988, she plays the ruthless dragon-lady and former beauty queen Velma Von Tussle, the gimlet-eyed TV station chief in charge of a 60s pop music TV programme called The Corny Collins Show; this has a segregationist attitude to black music, permitting it appear once a month on something it calls “Negro Day”. Velma is icily opposed to a suggestion from the wideeyed dance contestant Tracy Turnblad to bring white and black people together on the show. Pfeiffer gets a sexy moment, reprising the song Big, Blonde and Beautiful, attempting to seduce Tracy’s dad (Christopher Walken).
17. The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
One of Pfeiffer’s “witchy” roles, but atypical in that it is from her starry heyday. It is a wackily OTT fantasy comedy based on John Updike’s novel, which perhaps reveals much about how Updike saw himself. Pfeiffer plays one of three single and discontented women (with Cher and Susan Sarandon) in Eastwick, Rhode Island, who have their own little coven and whose intimate conversations supernaturally summon a certain diabolic man they want to meet, played with much eyebrow work by Jack Nicholson. In a way, the women and Nicholson are in danger of cancelling each other out, but it is a strong performance from Pfeiffer.
16. Stardust (2007)
This ornate Gilliam-esque fantasy, taken from Neil Gaiman’s novel, was the other film that brought Pfeiffer back to the screen in 2007. Despite being a bit overwrought, it gave Pfeiffer a perfectly decent showcase in the witchy role of Lamia, a British-voiced sorceress who is on a fanatical mission to find the source of eternal youth. She relished the panto nastiness and absurdity of the role, but stayed Pfeiffer-classy at the same time. If there had not been a strict British thesps rule for the Harry Potter movies, she could easily have found a berth there.
15. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Why on earth shouldn’t Pfeiffer find her career third act in superhero films (along with Michael Douglas, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart etc)? In AntMan and the Wasp, with Paul Rudd as Ant-Man and Evangeline Lilly as the Wasp, Pfeiffer plays Janet, the mysterious mother of Lilly’s character, Hope. Janet has to be rescued after miniaturising herself to a subatomic size to fly into a rogue nuclear missile to disable it, then finds herself unable to get back out. It is a bizarre notion, but Pfeiffer is engagingly like a mix of Marlon Brando and Susannah York playing Superman’s parents in the 1978 film.
14. Wolf (1994)
Pfeiffer’s second pairing with Nicholson on this list. Both in their 90s superstarry pomp, they find themselves in a ripe high-concept fantasy: a rare, perhaps unique, example of “romantic horror” that can claim to be an ancestor of the Twilight series. Pfeiffer plays Laura, the pert daughter of the wealthy mogul who takes over a publishing house and fires Will (Nicholson), the growlingly saturnine editor-in-chief, and replaces him an obnoxious smoothie who is having an affair with Will’s wife. It is at this moment that the unhappy, ragefilled Will is bitten by a black wolf in the woods and turns into a werewolf. Lupine Jack, sprouting hair and fangs all over the place, has a fascinatingly dangerous sexual allure for the playfully sensual Laura as the secret of Will’s other life becomes clear. Pfeiffer plays it dead straight and gives it an enjoyable gloss.
13. Grease 2 (1982)
Here, improbably, was the movie that gave Pfeiffer her big break. In the much yawned-at sequel to Grease, she takes on the role of Stephanie, the uberblond chick and leader of the Pink Ladies, enamoured of bikers and Freudianly singing of her yearning for a “Cool Rider”. It is hardly new to complain that the actors in the Grease movies were too old for teen roles, but, interestingly, Pfeiffer looks mature in a good way: her distinctive chiselled