Like many movie stars, Michelle Pfeiffer has turned down plenty of films that went on to become critical and box-office hits; for further examples, just ask Sandra Bullock and Will Smith. Pfeiffer’s list of would-be movies, though, is especially legendary; it includes films like Pretty Woman, Thelma & Louise, Basic Instinct, and Sleepless in Seattle. In a Monday interview on the Today show, host Hoda Kotb began asking her about those films, reading off a list of titles—until Pfeiffer sheepishly cut off Kotb.
“You know, I don’t know that I want to go through the list of the things that I turned down,” Pfeiffer said with a laugh. But when pressed by the relentlessly jolly Kotb, Pfeiffer reconsidered. “But the thing is, there are so many reasons that go into turning something down, and it’s not necessarily because you don’t want to do it,” the actress said. “There’s a conflict, you’re committed to something else . . . typically, it was something like that.”
Pfeiffer, who took a hiatus from the screen between 2014 and 2016, hasn’t made a habit of talking about her lost roles. “I got so picky that I . . . disappeared,” she said in a 2018 AARP interview. “My agent’s nickname for me is Dr. No.”
She was picky during that period largely because she was busy raising her children, she tells Kotb. “I just got pickier and pickier . . . it was hard to leave them, especially when they got to be school age,” she said. “It was always a juggling act.”
Now, the actress says she’s an “empty-nester,” which has led to the Pfeifferaissance of the last two years. She’s wasted no time getting back into the game, starring in everything from Darren Aronofsky’s polarizing Mother! to Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp. Next on the docket? A turn in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Avengers: Endgame, and a project—“it’s not 100 percent,” she said—called French Exit, which Pfeiffer kept mostly mum about on Today. Also, she’s started a fragrance line called Henry Rose—a strong step in the Goopification of her renaissance.
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