Michelle Pfeiffer Reveals She Was Afraid of Being Fired from Films Early in Her Career
Michelle Pfeiffer is admitting she once struggled to gain confidence as a young actress.
The Maleficent: Mistress of Evil actress, 61, revealed she once feared getting fired from movie roles in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
“I think it comes from not having a background of formal training, you know, in the beginning,” Pfeiffer said. “And I think when I started out, a lot of actors were coming out of Juilliard and I was just this young person from Orange County, kind of just getting by on my instincts purely and I think, for the longest time, I felt like it wasn’t really enough and maybe didn’t give me the credibility and maybe because I had to find my technique as I went along.”
She added her lack of confidence stemmed from the fact “that I didn’t sort of start from a real secure place.”
In 2017, Pfeiffer told director Darren Aronofsky she felt like “a fraud” while working on movies.
“I have this constant fear that I’m a fraud and that I’m going to be found out,” she told Aronofsky for Interview magazine. “I think that’s because I started working fairly quickly and I wasn’t ready.”
“I didn’t have any formal training. I didn’t come from Juilliard. I was getting by and learning in front of the world.”
She added, “So I’ve always had this feeling that one day they’re going to find out that I’m really a fraud, that I really don’t know what I’m doing.”
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Pfeiffer appears as Queen Ingrith in the sequel to Maleficent. Ingrith is the mother of Prince Philip and seeks to use their marriage to drive a wedge between humans and fairies forever.
The film also stars Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning.
Pfeiffer told ET she “had a blast” making the film.
“I’m pretty confident with the villains now,” she said. “I know where to go for that.”
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is in theaters Oct. 18.
