(Credit: ABC)
Sat 16 August 2025 13:30, UK
Michelle Pfeiffer has a serious claim to being one of the coolest actors of all time. Something about her screen presence just screams ‘icon’, the way she carries herself is something that you simply cannot teach. She’s seldom in a bad film and almost never gives a bad performance; a rare feat even among the most elite Hollywood names.
Moviegoers of a certain age will have a hard time forgetting her spin as Selina Kyle/Catwoman in Batman Returns, in which she stole the show opposite Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito. She showed everybody how to properly use a piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys and played the perfect mob wife in Brian De Palma’s Scarface. Grease 2 might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Pfeiffer’s portrayal of cool chick Stephanie Zinone is a highlight. As it turns out, she doesn’t even need to be in a movie to have an impact on it.
Thelma & Louise is widely regarded as a feminist classic. The tale of two women, one a repressed housewife, one a free spirit, going on a road trip and finding themselves in the process is just as resonant now as it was when it first hit cinemas in 1991. Some of you might be surprised to learn that a film like this was directed by a man – Sir Ridley Scott, to be precise. However, he very nearly wasn’t the one behind the camera.
“I was going to be the producer,” Scott confessed to Entertainment Weekly. “I offered it to four people. They all turned it down. And while I was doing that, I was interviewing actors, actresses, and one of them said to me, ‘Listen, I can’t do this, I’m not going to be available. I wanted to meet, good script and everything. So why don’t you come to your senses and you direct it?’ So, that was Michelle Pfeiffer.”
Pfeiffer was originally going to co-star in the film alongside Jodie Foster, although it’s not clear who would have played who. Foster would drop out to play Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, arguably her most famous role. Conversely, Pfeiffer left to take a part in the film Love Field. She was nominated for an Oscar for it, but the film has had far less of a cultural impact than Thelma & Louise. After both Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn couldn’t do it, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were cast instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The trio of Scott, Davis, and Sarandon were perfect for this tale of action, adventure, and female friendship. The acclaim it received at the time it was released – it was nominated six times at the Oscars, winning ‘Best Original Screenplay’ – is nothing compared to how it is held up over three decades later. Pfeiffer herself has admitted she cannot watch the film, as she finds it too painful to think about what might have been.
She’s turned down plenty of famous parts in her time, but Thelma & Louise continues to haunt Pfeiffer to this day. It’s hard to imagine the film without Sarandon and Davis in the lead roles or Scott in the director’s seat, none of which would have been possible without her. Hopefully she can take some comfort in that.
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