Actually, for many years, the first thing I think of when I think of Michelle Pfeiffer is a photo shoot she did for Life back in probably the ’80s about the treasures of the Smithsonian. She was, to put it simply, exquisite. The two that have stuck with me since first I saw them were one of her holding a death mask and one of her in a case, draped in jewels. Possibly the problem with her career is that it has long been too easy to think of her as the beautiful woman in the Hope Diamond and far too easy to dismiss the really impressive acting she’s been doing all that time; she apparently has a serious case of Impostor Syndrome and believes the day will come when we’ll all notice she was never good at all.

But she has been. I just this summer saw her as Janet Van Dyne, which isn’t the most complicated role in the movie but still took some doing. It’s her second role in a superhero movie, of course, and I think we forget just how involved the role of Catwoman really is. She goes from quiet, oppressed Selina Kyle to vindictive, seductive Catwoman, and she sells it. Oh, she sells it in a comic book movie way, I grant you, but she sells it. This is a woman pushed over the brink of madness, and you believe that things sent her there.

I think people forget, too, just how many different genres she’s been in. Fantasy. Musicals. Mysteries. Drama. Comedy. Period piece. Shakespeare. Voice work. She was in Delta House, the TV show version of Animal House as The Bombshell. She’s sung in eleven movies and four TV shows; she’s produced two movies. No directing yet. She is still, at sixty, a strikingly beautiful woman, but she is also extremely talented and versatile.

In Ladyhawke, she goes from steely determination to intense passion to playful teasing to abject terror, all in the service of what is an admittedly silly premise. I mean, I like that movie; I’ve liked that movie for years. But it’s a silly movie, and she’s one of the people whose performances in it is better than the movie deserves. I’ve seen several movies where that’s my feeling about her, that she’s giving her all in a movie that may or may not actually deserve it. (Of course, I didn’t like Scarface, so there’s that, I suppose.) She definitely elevates these movies, I feel.

And man, she can rock the hell out of a period piece. It’s not just being beautiful in the dresses, though that’s a lot of what’s required for rocking the hell out of a period piece, I have to admit. But she really does just throw herself into the roles, and I adore them. It kind of amazes me that she’d never done a movie with Michael Douglas before, because they seem so ideally suited to a certain era of movie. But, you know, we’ll presumably be see more of them together now.

I don’t ask for the Hope Diamond, just a buck or two a month toward my Patreon!