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" When I first laid eyes on Michelle Pfeiffer many years ago, she was standing on the stairs of a palazzo in Venice for a ceremony honoring the director Martin Scorsese. Surrounded by paparazzi and press, she looked timid and afraid, a fawn caught in the crush of the crowd. For all her gorgeous radiance, she still seemed very much the small-town girl, wary of the bright lights and big changes that come with stardom.  Even now, Pfeiffer, 49, is a striking contradiction \u2014 a movie star who is world famous, yet truly private. &amp;quot;There have been people in my life who have told me I have to put myself out there more,&amp;quot; she confesses with a shrug. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s so hard for me to do that.&amp;quot; Nonetheless, after two years off the big screen, Pfeiffer is ready to be back in the public eye.  This summer, she&amp;#039;ll be seen as the scheming vixen Velma Von Tussle in the movie version of Broadway&amp;#039;s Hairspray. Though John Travolta is already getting tons of attention for his gender-bending turn as an obese woman in the film, it is Pfeiffer&amp;#039;s vampy, campy performance as a meddlesome mom that is sure to win raves. Adept at comedy (Married to the Mob) as well as drama (The Fabulous Baker Boys), Pfeiffer is tackling a surprising role in the science-fiction film Stardust, due next month. Co-starring Robert De Niro and Claire Danes, the movie features Pfeiffer as the villainess. Also this summer, she will be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. &amp;quot;My kids are most excited about that,&amp;quot; she says as we settle in to talk. &amp;quot;I get to kneel down on the sidewalk, I guess so I can bend down and kiss the star \u2014 and that way, everyone can see my cleavage!&amp;quot; Raised with two sisters and a brother in Midway City, CA, near Los Angeles, Pfeiffer has recalled her childhood as somewhat wild, and often lonely: &amp;quot;I remember being dirty, barefoot, with stringy hair, running around, nobody knowing where I was half the time.... I had rabbits that I loved, but I don&amp;#039;t remember having a lot of friends.&amp;quot; These days, she is trying to raise her own family in a bucolic environment, far removed from Hollywood. Her kids remain the focus of her life \u2014 daughter Claudia is 14, son John is 12 \u2014 and she has been happily married for more than 13 years to writer-producer David Kelley, the powerhouse behind such TV hits as Ally McBeal and Boston Legal. She and Kelley recently moved to a rural corner of northern California, so their kids could have a life untouched by the lunacy of Los Angeles, on a spread surrounded by three dogs, a cat, horses, and a pair of miniature donkeys. Even now, Pfeiffer remains unimpressed with fame&amp;#039;s trappings \u2014 just like that girl I saw all those years ago on the staircase.  LIZ SMITH: How are you, honey? I feel like I just saw you, because you were on TV last night....  MICHELLE PFEIFFER: I&amp;#039;m actually really good.... You saw me on TV? Did I say anything stupid? LS: No, you were wonderful. You always handle yourself well on those late-night shows.  MP: Oh, that is so not true. I say really stupid things sometimes. When I go back and watch some of my old interviews from when I was younger, I just cringe. LS: I don&amp;#039;t think you have anything to worry about. And anyway, you haven&amp;#039;t been out there a lot recently.  MP: It&amp;#039;s funny, because I have been away for a while, but, actually, for the past two years, I&amp;#039;ve been working. Now those movies are finally starting to be released. So this is going to be a big summer for me, professionally. Especially because of Hairspray. People have already seen snippets of it, and the reaction has been really positive...the audiences have just exploded. LS: Well, if you want to make a comeback, an explosion is a good way to do it.  MP: Absolutely. But, you know, I guess this doesn&amp;#039;t feel like a comeback, because even when I wasn&amp;#039;t working, I was really busy. The time has flown by.   LS: You certainly have your hands full--your kids are basically teenagers now! MP: I know, can you believe it? To tell you the truth, I feel like it&amp;#039;s more difficult to be working now that they&amp;#039;re older, even though I had actually thought it would be the other way around. LS: Really? Why is it harder? MP: Well, first of all, when they&amp;#039;re babies, you just sort of throw them in the car seat and they go where you go. I mean, I literally used to bring Claudia everywhere. In restaurants, I used to just plop her down on the table in her car seat--she was like a centerpiece! But now that they&amp;#039;re older, they have their routines and their schedules, and their interests and their friends. And I don&amp;#039;t really want to disrupt that, because I want them to have a sense of continuity and normalcy.  LS: Do they mind that you&amp;#039;re working more now? MP: Not at all. They&amp;#039;re very encouraging, because they know it makes me happy. And also, since I haven&amp;#039;t been working so much, it&amp;#039;s not as if they&amp;#039;ve spent the past years saying to me, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re always gone.&amp;quot; And now that they really understand more about what I do, I think they&amp;#039;re more curious than ever. Because frankly, in the past, they could not have been less interested. Most people in the world have seen more of me on-screen than my kids have.  LS: Tell me about Claudia. Is she a typical teen?  MP: Boy, there&amp;#039;s nothing typical about my girl. She&amp;#039;s a force to be reckoned with, and an amazing human being. I wanted her to be a really independent, outspoken young woman, and I sure got that! She&amp;#039;s also very creative and inquisitive. And what&amp;#039;s exciting about this age is that she&amp;#039;s really coming into her own. She&amp;#039;s everything I&amp;#039;d hoped she would be. LS: I&amp;#039;ll always remember you taught me a great lesson years ago, Michelle, when you corrected me after I wrote something about Claudia and referred to her as your adopted daughter--she&amp;#039;s just your daughter. MP: That&amp;#039;s right. And you never did that again. I applaud you for that.  LS: You were still single when you decided to adopt. In what ways do you feel your life has changed since you became a mom? MP: Well, one thing that&amp;#039;s great about having kids, especially given my career, is that it forces you out of your narcissism. I mean, I&amp;#039;m in a career where my product is me. So it was nice to have something, someone, come along and take the focus off me. I really needed to give myself some distractions from myself.  LS: You and your husband, David, got together very shortly before you adopted Claudia, right? MP: Right. The adoption process was already in motion when he and I met. So when she came, he and I had only been together for about two months. So we had this child with us right away, and most people don&amp;#039;t have that. But I really got to see him in a situation that certainly would separate the boys from the men. Obviously, he really rose to the occasion. And, you know, we were both adults. It&amp;#039;s not like we were kids anymore, and we were both at the age where we were ready to start a family. So we both got to see each other as parents before we progressed in our relationship together, and in a strange way, it took the pressure off us, as a couple. We had something else to focus on. It was sort of perfectly timed. I mean, it&amp;#039;s a real testament to the kind of person he is, but also to the fact that sometimes the traditional way of doing things isn&amp;#039;t always the best way.  LS: But did you worry that you had pretty much skipped the honeymoon period of a new romance and, instead, just waded right into the hard part of parenthood? MP: Well, what happened is that our honeymoon period got stuck in a state of arrested development, so that it sort of feels like we&amp;#039;re still in that phase. We never got a chance to get tired of each other, because we were constantly distracted. We never had that moment of looking at each other and thinking, Well, I&amp;#039;m not so sure about you after all.... There&amp;#039;s never been that disillusionment. But we do tend to our marriage; it&amp;#039;s not something we take for granted. We still have a regular date night every week. LS: Soon after you and David married, you had your son, John; do he and his sister get along? MP: Yes, they do. They&amp;#039;ve been close their whole lives, and they&amp;#039;re close in age. But don&amp;#039;t get me wrong: They have their moments of sibling conflict. I remember, before I had them, I didn&amp;#039;t really believe much in gender differences, or that little boys were inherently all that different from little girls. But I certainly believe it now, because when they were little, they couldn&amp;#039;t have been more different--John was into trucks and Claudia was into kitty cats, and he was eating bugs and she wasn&amp;#039;t. But I just feel like I&amp;#039;ve been so blessed to have these two children.  LS: Do you have to be strict with them? Are you more of the disciplinarian?  MP: I&amp;#039;m probably the bad cop in the house, yeah. Because Dad is the one to say, &amp;quot;Oh, OK.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t want to be the bad guy, but I am definitely more of the disciplinarian, the strict one, by default. LS: Do you and David parent your children the way your mother and father parented you? What&amp;#039;s different? MP: You know, it&amp;#039;s funny, because the older my kids get, the more I refer back to what my parents did. I started out thinking, Oh, I&amp;#039;m not going to do it the way my parents did, and then as I got into parenting, I realized--Hey, maybe they did know a little something. LS: What are your hopes for your kids? MP: I want them to be fighters; I want them to be survivors; I want them to have something they believe in, and to stay true to themselves. My grandmother raised five children during the Depression by herself. At 50, she threw her sewing machine into the back of a pickup truck and drove from North Dakota to California. She was a real survivor, so that&amp;#039;s my stock. That&amp;#039;s how I want my kids to be too.  LS: You clearly love being a mom--are there any things about being a parent that you wish you could change? Any part of motherhood that you don&amp;#039;t really enjoy?  MP: Oh, I&amp;#039;d love to get more sleep. After Claudia was born, I thought that once she started sleeping through the night I&amp;#039;d be able to catch up, but then John came along. I kept thinking that eventually the day would come when I wouldn&amp;#039;t feel exhausted, but now I&amp;#039;ve come to the sad realization that it&amp;#039;s not gonna happen.  LS: Why did you decide to move away from Los Angeles to northern California? How did your kids feel about that move? MP: Well, I think all of us miss what was familiar about living in L.A., and, obviously, we miss our friendships. And I have a lot of family there, so I miss them. So some of the adjustment has been hard. But overall, I&amp;#039;m really happy we made the move, and I think that it was definitely the best decision for our family. You know, the more you can meet people from different walks of life, the better it is for you. I think the more you can create situations and experiences that give you new perspective, the better. I needed to expand my world.  LS: You and David must not miss the pressure cooker of L.A. too much. MP: Well, pressure is not something that bothers David. I actually think he likes pressure. And I function best when my adrenaline is high, when I have a lot of things on my plate. We both like that sort of intense energy, and I do think one of the harder things, for him, about the move was leaving behind that faster pace. Although, he goes back to L.A. for business about once a week. He commutes back and forth pretty regularly.  LS: What is life like in your cozy little enclave up north? MP: Probably the biggest difference is that we don&amp;#039;t feel as though we have to go to this screening or that benefit or whatever. We can spend more time together as a family because there just aren&amp;#039;t as many distractions. I really feel a huge release being up here.  LS: And you don&amp;#039;t have as much press hounding you. MP: True. I do sometimes feel like the paparazzi are really what ran me out of L.A. They&amp;#039;re just giving everyone a bad name.  LS: You know, you and David are total anomalies in Hollywood--you&amp;#039;ve been married for 13 years! MP: Who would have thought, right? And all these people said it wouldn&amp;#039;t last. I suppose they always say that--until it does last, and then they act as if they never doubted it. LS: What was it about David that won you over? What was different about him compared to other men? MP: Here&amp;#039;s the truth: When we first got together, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it never did. It never has. I just couldn&amp;#039;t believe it could be true that he was such a decent person. And then, he actually has this very wicked sense of humor. And he is so gifted and really bright. It just blew me away. LS: Does David talk to you about what roles you should do? Does he get into your professional life? MP: Only if I invite him in. And then, because he&amp;#039;s so busy, I have to beg him! Please, will you read this for me? [Laughs] LS: Looking back over your lengthy body of work, I was surprised to see how often you&amp;#039;ve played really intense roles, parts that aren&amp;#039;t actually all that glamorous.  MP: Well, I find it interesting that I have done very few films where I&amp;#039;ve actually wanted to keep my wardrobe. So that sort of sums up a lot of the roles I&amp;#039;ve played.  LS: But I do think of you as a leading lady in the traditional sense. And you&amp;#039;ve worked opposite some incredible leading men--Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Mel Gibson, George Clooney....  MP: Yeah, it&amp;#039;s a pretty impressive list. I&amp;#039;ve been so lucky, haven&amp;#039;t I? And now I&amp;#039;ve been up against John Travolta in drag! LS: How do you feel about that? MP: Well, I had so much fun, and the critics may accuse me of chewing up the scenery, of overacting, and that will be fine, because that&amp;#039;s sort of what I needed to do. And to do that, I did have to leave my comfort zone.   LS: Growing up, did you always know you wanted to act? MP: You know, I did, but it was more of a kid&amp;#039;s fantasy than something that seemed really achievable, like a realistic goal. When I went into it, as a young woman, I thought the chances of succeeding were so ridiculously small that my philosophy was, Well, I&amp;#039;ll give this a shot and if I don&amp;#039;t succeed, I&amp;#039;m still young enough to figure out something else to do. I actually went to school to be a court reporter for a little while.  LS: Lucky for us that didn&amp;#039;t work out! You once famously said that being considered &amp;quot;too pretty&amp;quot; kept you from getting certain roles. Do you still feel that&amp;#039;s a problem for you these days?  MP: No, I don&amp;#039;t really think there&amp;#039;s that same prejudice anymore. I think when I was starting out, that was the case. But it&amp;#039;s not now.  LS: Has getting older bothered you? Do you ever feel it has limited you as an actress? MP: I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s easy for women to watch themselves age. And I think it&amp;#039;s obviously doubly hard to grow older when you are a public figure and you constantly have to see your image all the time, and people are constantly pointing it out. LS: What are your feelings about plastic surgery? MP: Honestly, depending on what stage I&amp;#039;m at in my life, my opinion on plastic surgery changes. At the moment, I&amp;#039;m not against it. But you know, I&amp;#039;ve never been against plastic surgery--I&amp;#039;m against bad plastic surgery. I&amp;#039;m against the overuse of plastic surgery. Which is what I see too much of these days.  LS: I have to say, you still look so incredible. To me, you look so much like you did when you were just starting out....  MP: Oh, there&amp;#039;s a big difference! A huge difference. I mean, I&amp;#039;m pretty well preserved, but there&amp;#039;s definitely some aging going on [Laughs]. And the older you get, the less you can cheat. So now I&amp;#039;m more health conscious than I used to be. And you know, when I go to work and when I&amp;#039;m in the public eye, I take much better care of myself. Because when I&amp;#039;m not working, I do indulge more. My favorite food in the world is Mexican food. I&amp;#039;m not a dessert person. I&amp;#039;m more of a crunchy, salty girl. I could live on chips and salsa. I would take a Mexican meal over some fancy French cuisine anytime. LS: So I guess you won&amp;#039;t be heading home today to bake a big batch of cookies.... MP: Actually, I do bake. In fact, John and I made a cake not too long ago--it was a banana cake with butter-cream frosting. It was disgustingly delicious. And worth every calorie! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a17389/michelle-pfeiffer-0707/>