Michelle Pfeiffer’s Iconic Career and Major Life Moments

Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection

‘Scarface’

Visionary director Brian de Palma was initially dead set against Pfeiffer auditioning for his remake of 1932 gangster movie Scarface because of her involvement in Grease 2.

Producer Martin Bregman convinced de Palma to give Pfeiffer a chance, and she impressed the filmmaker so much that he cast her as drug-addicted gangster’s moll Elvira Hancock over frontrunners Glenn Close and Sigourney Weaver.

The sheer amount of brutal violence and drug abuse depicted in Scarface made the film extremely controversial at the time of its release in 1983.

However, Scarface stood the test of time as a huge influence on hip-hop culture and is now often ranked as one of the greatest gangster movies ever made.

Pfeiffer admitted on “The Skinny Confidential” podcast in 2023 that filming Scarface was a grueling process, both physically and emotionally.

“I cried myself to sleep almost every night on Scarface,” she remembered. “It was obviously a huge deal for me. Al [Pacino] wanted someone else, understandably so. I mean, I’m the girl from Grease 2, you know what I mean? I was just sort of … Then like a month later, they called me back for a screen test. And I was, it was mixed because I was kind of, by that point, so happy to be out of my misery, and I was being tortured.”

Pfeiffer mentioned that her biggest worry throughout Scarface’s production was whether or not she would “be bad” in the finished film.

“I had such a lack of hope that I would ever get this part. I was so chill. I mean, I just walked in, and I did a really good screen test, and that’s how I got the part,” she added.