Pfans set for Pfeiffer's role

NEW YORK — The list of things Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't want to hear includes this sentence: “The way I see it, your golden age was 1987 to 1993.”

And yet some of us are idiots, and say it anyway.

She responds with silence. The hotel room freezes over. So, we fumble: Do you, um, think in those terms? In phases?

“No, not really,” she says softly.

An excruciating pause follows.Her blue eyes shimmer. She will win this staring contest.

“I sort of don't look back.”

At all?

“No, not really,” she repeats. Then the ice thaws a bit. “I've always had this fear of getting stuck in the past. Becoming, like, Norma Desmond or something.”

Michelle Pfeiffer — siren of cinema, three-time Oscar nominee, the woman on the cover of People's first-ever issue of “The 50 Most Beautiful People in World” — is 51.

Gloria Swanson was 51 when she played the delusional diva Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard.” But to become Norma, a star must believe in her own stardom. Norma watched her own movies all day. Michelle will watch her movies once, but never again. She's too critical of her work, she says. It's painful to watch.

She's been a movie star for 25 years, but no part of the job seems to work for her. Michelle hates parties. She hates premieres.

She mourns the loss of her privacy, though taking a five-year hiatus helped. If she had her way, she would not be talking about her latest movie, “Chéri,” even though it's her first real lead role in almost a decade.

Twenty years ago she played a doe-eyed girl victimized by social predators in “Dangerous Liaisons.” Now, in another adaptation of French literature with the same director, she plays wealthy courtesan Lea de Lonval, who starts to feel the tiny ravages of time when she shacks up with a man half her age.

“Mmm,” she says, contemplating these career bookends. “Literally, the virgin and the whore. And everything in between, from then until now.”

The pfans, naturally, are excited for this movie.

“The what?” she asks.

The pfans.

“I don't know what that is.”

P-F-A-N-S. The people whose pfoolish hearts pfell pfor you, your pface, your pfilms.

“Oh, my gosh,” she says, laughing. “Like Trekkies. I have fans. I have PUH-fans. They say things? They talk to each other? Well, you know, I'm not connected in that way. It's probably healthier. I don't have time, honestly.”

She laughs again. This is either rehearsed ignorance or gee-whiz nonchalance. Either way, the sound you hear is a million pfan hearts breaking.

Her voice lowers to a horrified whisper when talking about one of her first jobs in Hollywood. She played a character called Bombshell in a 1979 TV series spinoff of “Animal House.”

“Oh my gosh, it was so bad,” she says, crossing her eyes for effect.

Born in Santa Ana, Calif., Pfeiffer was a beach bum who bagged groceries and was crowned Miss Orange County in the late '70s. She played Tony Danza's girlfriend, Suzie Q, in 1980's “The Hollywood Knights.” Two years later she strutted her way through “Grease 2” in a pink satin jacket.

No one came out of that movie looking good, which is why, rumor has it, Brian De Palma didn't want to consider her for the role of Tony Montana's cokehead girlfriend in “Scarface.”

But she got that role, too.

Decades later she finally has a film that's all about her, co-starring a love interest who is 23 years younger..

For her, age is just another contrivance.

“It's on people's minds. I think peole are struggling with the concept of how much do you let go and age gracefully. How much do you try to, you know, fight it and stave it off?”

“You know what?” she says. “I'm fine.”

So there it is. She's fine, if a bit tired. As for what comes next, there's a potential project that would start in the fall. She may be recharged by then, she says. She may do it. (The sound you hear is a million pfans holding their breath, crossing their pfingers.)