Michelle Pfeiffer’s Life and Career Through the Years: ‘Batman,’ ‘Dangerous Minds,’ More

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Whether it was her ageless beauty or effortless charm, Pfeiffer stood out among a new generation of movie stars emerging in the early 1980s. Her most iconic roles showed incredible range — from donning a slinky catsuit in box office smash Batman Returns to earning three Oscar nominations for a trio of period dramas. Let’s not forget her turn as a scream queen in What Lies Beneath either!

‘Grease 2’

Pfeiffer was on her honeymoon with first husband Peter Horton in 1981 when she learned she’d been cast in Grease 2.

The musical sequel was critically panned and bombed at the box office upon release in June 1982, but Pfeiffer’s performance as Pink Ladies leader Stephanie Zinone proved she had star potential.

While there were rumors for decades that Pfeiffer hated her experience on Grease 2, she confirmed in April 2023 that she looked back fondly on the sequel.

“This project is and has always been so special to me and my history,” she wrote via Instagram.

The industry fallout from Grease 2 wasn’t all bad because the musical flop ended up playing a pivotal role in what Pfeiffer did next …

‘Scarface’

Visionary director Brian de Palma was initially dead set against Pfeiffer auditioning for his remake of 1932 gangster movie Scarface because of her involvement in Grease 2.

Producer Martin Bregman convinced de Palma to give Pfeiffer a chance, and she impressed the filmmaker so much that he cast her as drug-addicted gangster’s moll Elvira Hancock over frontrunners Glenn Close and Sigourney Weaver.

The sheer amount of brutal violence and drug abuse depicted in Scarface made the film extremely controversial at the time of its release in 1983.

However, Scarface stood the test of time as a huge influence on hip-hop culture and is now often ranked as one of the greatest gangster movies ever made.

Pfeiffer admitted on “The Skinny Confidential” podcast in 2023 that filming Scarface was a grueling process, both physically and emotionally.

“I cried myself to sleep almost every night on Scarface,” she remembered. “It was obviously a huge deal for me. Al [Pacino] wanted someone else, understandably so. I mean, I’m the girl from Grease 2, you know what I mean? I was just sort of … Then like a month later, they called me back for a screen test. And I was, it was mixed because I was kind of, by that point, so happy to be out of my misery, and I was being tortured.”

Pfeiffer mentioned that her biggest worry throughout Scarface’s production was whether or not she would “be bad” in the finished film.

“I had such a lack of hope that I would ever get this part. I was so chill. I mean, I just walked in, and I did a really good screen test, and that’s how I got the part,” she added.

‘The Witches of Eastwick’

Pfeiffer cemented herself as a Hollywood megastar with 1987’s The Witches of Eastwick, in which she played one-third of a righteously vengeful coven, along with Cher and Susan Sarandon.

In the dark comedy, three best friends manifest magical powers at the same time as they realize they’ve all been manipulated by the same playboy, Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson).

The Witches of Eastwick was nominated for two Oscars and won a BAFTA Film Award, along with making more than $100 million at the box office. Pfeiffer downplayed rumors of onset tension among its leading ladies, insisting she made “a great team” with Cher and Sarandon despite less-than-stellar working conditions.

“We became very close. It was a difficult shoot, but not because we didn't get along,” she was quoted as saying. “We started with an unfinished script, and then you get a lot of cooks in the kitchen and everyone's doing rewrites and it just became really stressful. But if anything, it made us stick together. It was like all the actors were in the trenches together.”

The actress went on, “Working without a script doesn't work very well. We had a finished script but it wasn't one everyone was satisfied with. There were constant changes and there was a lot of drama. It's very rarely a positive to start without a solid foundation. It works sometimes.”

John Malkovich ‘Affair’

According to reports, Pfeiffer allegedly had an affair with Malkovich on the set of their 1988 romantic period drama Dangerous Liaisons. She was still married to her first husband, Horton, at the time but they split in 1988. (Malkovich and then-wife Glenne Headly also divorced in 1988.)

While Pfeiffer has declined to speak publicly about this period in her life, Malkovich told The Age in 2003 that he cried for a year after the affair was outed.

‘Dangerous Liaisons’

Despite a tumultuous behind-the-scenes scandal, Dangerous Liaisons was a milestone in Pfeiffer’s career because she received her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the film. (Geena Davis won the Oscar for The Accidental Tourist.)

Dangerous Liaisons included an early supporting role for a then-23-year-old Keanu Reeves, with Pfeiffer noticing early on that he was destined to be “a big star.”

‘The Fabulous Baker Boys’

Pfeiffer scored her second Oscar nomination — and first Golden Globe win — for playing lounge singer Susie Diamond in the 1989 romantic comedy The Fabulous Baker Boys, opposite real-life siblings Jeff and Beau Bridges. (Jessica Tandy won the Best Actress Oscar that year for Driving Miss Daisy.)

The Steve Kloves-written musical was loosely based on the lives of real-life piano players Ferrante & Teicher, though he added a love triangle twist with Pfeiffer’s character.

Pfeiffer told Deadline in 2021 that The Fabulous Baker Boys is “one of [her] performances that doesn’t make [her] cringe.”

“I was terrified to do that singing and it was a lot of hard work, and I have such fond memories working with those Bridges boys and with Steve Klove,” she said. “I had read that script five years prior, but nobody wanted to make it with me, and somehow it came back to me. And so it meant a lot to me for so many reasons. Actually Jeff and I have been torturing Steve about doing a sequel.”

As of 2025, a Fabulous Baker Boys sequel hasn’t come to fruition.

‘Batman Returns’

Director Tim Burton’s 1992 Batman sequel delivered what many DC Comics aficionados consider to be the definitive portrayal of Catwoman, courtesy of Pfeiffer. Her stitched leather costume was a major fashion moment, and who can ever forget her sharp-tongued one-liners aimed at Danny DeVito’s Penguin?

During a 2022 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Pfeiffer revealed that she considered Catwoman the role of a lifetime because she’d been “obsessed” with the antihero since she was “a little girl.”

“'Someone was cast before me. Annette Bening, who is wonderful, and then she got pregnant. Awesome. And then I got the part,” the star confirmed to host Jimmy Fallon.

Once Batman Returns made a staggering $266 million in ticket sales, Pfeiffer and Burton signed on to make a Catwoman spinoff. Unfortunately, the pair eventually dropped out and Warner Bros went with Halle Berry’s Catwoman instead. Everyone knows how that turned out …

‘Love Field’

Pfeiffer produced 1995’s historical drama and her investment paid off with her third Oscar nomination — this time, for playing a Dallas housewife at the scene of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

While Pfeiffer didn’t bring home the Best Actress Oscar (it went to Emma Thompson for Howards End), she did clinch the prestigious Silver Bear prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

David E. Kelley Marriage

The TV mega–producer behind Big Little Lies and Ally McBeal tied the knot with Pfeiffer in 1993. The two worked together a few times during the early years of their marriage, most notably when Pfeiffer played the title role in the Kelley-written 1996 romantic drama To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday.

However, the couple have focused on separate projects in recent decades. Pfeiffer shared her opinion on The Tonight Show in 2022 that “nobody writes, honestly, better for women” than Kelley.

“And yet, I value our relationship more than a good part, and I just think it's too risky,” Pfeiffer said about her and Kelley’s professional boundaries.