---

by Kastle
(Page 2)

---

Dangerous Minds is based on the story of Lou Ann Johnson, an ex-Marine turned inner-city English teacher. Pfeiffer thinks Johnson is an amazing person. "I wish there were thousands more like her. God, would the world be a better place! We could send our kids to school and not live in fear that they're going to be illiterate, brain dead or just dead."

Known as one of the most beautiful women in the world, the question came up of how realistic it was to place Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of an ex-Marine and teacher in this environment. But Pfeiffer shot back, "There are a lot of beautiful women who teach and not all Marines have short hair and look androgynous. Lou Ann is beautiful and she's feminine, she's a lot more feminine than I am. We still live by stereotypes and they're just not truthful. In this movie, I look attractive but it's certainly not my most glamorous. I didn't think she needed to be dumpy or homely or frumpy. Lou Ann's a beautiful woman, she dresses in Laura Ashley, she's a foofer!"

Pfeiffer herself has children to worry about, she is a mother of three, one adopted and two of her own. She was pregnant with her last child during the filming of Dangerous Minds, hence the "layered look" in her costuming. Behaving much like the image of a 90's superwoman, she juggles her family and work, often taking her children with her on the set. While Michelle Pfeiffer has become a box office success, known for such films as The Fabulous Baker Boys, Frankie and Johnny, Wolf and Batman, she says she is still fighting the oppression of women in film.

"It's pretty competitive because there are only so many good women's parts and we all want them." She added that acting allows her to play out her intrigue in studying the psychological make-up of people and that if she hadn't become an actress she would have been a psychiatrist. But with acting there is the good and the bad. The good is the perks, the flexibility and the fun. The bad is not knowing when the next job will be. "The extreme of working intensely for 3 or 4 months, then nothing. You have to try to structure your time. It takes a certain kind of person to figure that out and not fall into this kind of narcissistic implosion."

Pfeiffer's persistence has given her a lasting career. "I wouldn't go away, I'd lick my wounds and come back for more. I think people either have IT or they don't. I have yet to meet someone in this business who doesn't have IT, which is the ability to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, dust yourself off and move forward."

Michelle Pfeiffer, the once directionless but curious student definitely has IT.

---

---

© Copyright 1995 Urban Desires