Michelle Pfeiffer “cried herself to sleep every night” on the set of ‘Scarface’
Michelle Pfeiffer landed her first leading role in Grease 2, the poorly-received sequel to the 1978 box-office hit. Although she had only starred in a few minor screen roles before that moment, director Patricia Birch cast her because she possessed “a quirky quality you don’t expect”. However, the film was disastrous, and the actor’s agent later stated that her role in Grease 2 was the reason why “she couldn’t get any jobs. Nobody wanted to hire her”.
Thus, when Brian De Palma began searching for an actor to play Elvira Hancock in Scarface, the drug-addicted trophy wife of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana, he refused to watch Pfeiffer audition. However, the producer, Martin Bregman, insisted on having Pfeiffer in for a trial, and she eventually won the role. Of course, her performance was well-received, and Pfeiffer no longer had to worry about the future of her career.
Off the back of Scarface, Pfeiffer landed roles in various projects throughout the decade, such as Into The Night, The Witches of Eastwick, Dangerous Liaisons, and The Fabulous Baker Boys. The following decade saw the actor gain even more high-profile roles, such as Catwoman in Batman Returns and The Age of Innocence. Given this rise, Pfeiffer established herself as one of the most successful and profitable stars of the 1980s and 1990s, earning three Academy Award nominations and receiving a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.
Of course, it is fortunate that Bregman recognised Pfeiffer’s potential and insisted on her audition for Scarface, with the role almost going to Glenn Close instead. Pfeiffer’s performance cemented her as a future star, proving Pacino wrong, who initially thought she was the wrong fit. According to Bregman: “He was concerned that she didn’t look right. She didn’t fit the image of Elvira he had in his mind. But he was dead wrong.”
Pfeiffer brought depth to the role of a heavily objectified woman. In the book Scarface Nation, the actor reflected on playing the character. “Sometimes, though, by playing an object you can actually say more about objectifying women than if you play somebody of strength,” she said. “She was a hood ornament, like another Rolls-Royce or something, for both of the men that she was with. I felt that by playing something that mirrors someone’s life in that way, I could make a kind of feminist statement.”
Despite this, Pfeiffer still found being on set difficult because she was one of the only women. In an interview with Darren Aronofsky for Interview Magazine, Pfieffer explained: “I can tell you that I was terrified. And it was a six-month shoot, I think. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and I were really the only females. It was a boys’ club. And it was also the nature of the relationship for Tony Montana to be very dismissive of my character. So I would go to sleep some nights crying.”
She continued: “I’m very willful, you know. I’m a survivor. It’s in my nature. I don’t look so tough, but I am. And I think I was able to hide behind the tough exterior of that character, who was just sort of tuned out and tuned off, drugged.”