When asked to pick her favorite performance, she uneasily adjusts her position on the sofa. "Well ... I don't think I can." The only time she watches her films is right after they're finished, and all she can see at that point are her mistakes. "I'm probably too close to be objective." This discomfort stays with her for years, which means that when a film comes on television years later, she can't change channels quickly enough. She does a comic little self-parody for me: frantic, jabbing madly at the remote. But she's starting to realize that maybe she's not being fair to herself. "Recently, we were channel-surfing, and Married to the Mob was on, and I, of course, hated my performance in the movie. But my kids had never seen it, and so I let it play for a little bit. And I'm watching it, and I'm thinking, 'You know, I'm actually not that bad in this! Actually, I'm kind of funny!' And so who knows how I'll feel, if I let that much time go by before I revisit all those movies."
Pfeiffer has always struggled with perspective, it seems. Her tendency to agonize and to doubt still clouds her enjoyment of her career, but the insecurity is no longer as crippling as it once was. "I've learned to live with it, just as I've learned to live with a few wrinkles. I'm just not that objective about my own work. Inevitably, I like a performance that nobody else does, and the performances that other people like I think stink. So I've learned not to trust my own instincts."
Children, and the realization that she badly wanted them, shook her out of the spiral of self-absorption. Her daughter was adopted in 1993, just as she and Kelley were getting together (their son was born a year later). "By then I had started to find ways to balance myself out a bit. I'm glad I waited. In fact, that was why I made a conscious decision to start a family. I knew I was ready. I wanted something else to focus on. Work wasn't doing it all for me any more."
She's still hard on herself, but parenthood "has pulled my focus. I just can't worry about myself so much. I'm a much more balanced person in that way now - more forgiving." But she still requires delicate handling. "See, this is still a problem. Directors have to be very careful with me. On Stardust, because of the special effects and the location work, we had a fair amount of dubbing. But when I get on the [recording] stage, I begin to want to change everything. And Matthew was lovely because he really humored me. Of course, he didn't really use any of my suggestions, but he let me go through the process while he just nodded and went, 'Mmm, OK, I'll look at that.' That's what I need! But at least I can laugh at myself now," she adds, proudly. "I couldn't do that before."
The Taiwan release for Stardust is tomorrow. For a review of the movie, see tomorrow's paper, Page 16.
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