Wild Pfeiffer
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 Wild Pfeiffer Child
Who cares about that other Pfeiffer anyway? Little sister Dedee is a lot more fun.
To paraphrase something once said by an Indiana basketball coach, if having Dedee Pfeiffer show you her tattoos in the middle of a crowded restaurant is inevitable you might as well sit there and enjoy it. Neverthless, as this tawny and energetic actress starts directing her attention to the part of her anatomy where we know she has a tattoo, suspense begins to build - especially since there are two burly cops seated at a table behind her. What are the state's laws regarding indecent exposure, again?
Thankfully - we think - Pfeiffer has no intention of actually removing her jeans for this interview. "On my ass I have an old tattoo underneath an old tattoo," she describes, "and on top of that I have two cherubs in flight, which to me represents the epitome of innocence and love, so no matter what happens to me in my life I will never ever give up on the innocence of love. That's what the angels on my ass represent."
Whew.
Pfeiffer is getting ready to film a whodunit in Texas. "But I can't tell you whodunit," she says. She does reveal that the film stars Sean Young, C. Thomas Howell and maybe (as of presstime) Kevin Dillon. Our ears prick up at the mention of Sean Young, who once marched into a Warner Bros. Office dressed as Catwoman when she was angling for a part in Batman Returns. Isn't she... you know... a little crazy? That doesn't bother Dedee in the slightest. "I'm excited!" the actress insists. "Because I'm just as crazy, so I'm gonna be like, 'Bring it on, baby!'"
Dedee Pfeiffer brings it on, alright. She's known for everything from early appearances in such movies as Vamp and The Allnighter to regular appearances on such TV sitcoms as Cybill and the WB's For Your Love, right down to a cover story and layout in a 2002 issue of Playboy.
"They approached me many years before - before serious actresses did Playboy," Pfeiffer says about her appearance in the granddaddy of all men's magazines. "I felt like I needed a facelift in my career and I saw all these people coming out with tattoos and piercings - Angelina Jolie and all these crazy, wild people being accepted for their wildness, and I was always the wild Pfeiffer child."
"But I had to suppress that wildness in the publicity sense because of repect for Michelle and because she was very quiet and shy, and I felt a lot of my publicity people wanted to [angle] my publicity like I was Michelle and be very cautious and careful. But I realized it didn't do me any good, and all these other people were out there saying, 'Hey, this is me, take it or leave it.' That's always been my attitude."
Pfeiffer didn't want to do the typical Playboy glamour shoot, so she gave the photography session her own twist. "We got a black male model, and I did shots with him, because I'm very much into breaking down color and racial lines," she says. "So it wasn't just about, 'Look at me naked.' It was about, 'Look at the times in which we live in.' It was my way of saying I embrace all people of all colors. It could have been a woman for that matter with me, but I loved the idea of an interracial shoot in Playboy."
Though the actress went au naturale in Playboy, she exposed just a little skin in her previous film roles. "It's called partial nudity," she explains. "You're holding your breasts and you just see the side of that or your lower back or the top of the crack of your butt. I'd never done nudity, so it was very scary for me. I was very cold - I was inside a studio, but when you're butt-ass naked, it's cold! And when you're cold, it's hard to act like you're not nervous - when you're cold and nervous, it's hard to relax on film, so the first few Playboy pictures were a little bit stiff. You start with the bra and panties, and there was a crew of five people all working - not like a panel of people all staring at me. But it was still scary. What I did in my mind was portray a kind of caricature of myself, something like what I do when I'm acting, and when I started doing that the pictures started coming out better. Even butt-ass naked I wanted my personality to come through."
 Pfeiffer also lets her personality come though in a noir film called Double Exposure that's currently making the rounds on cable. The movie contains a positively stellar lesbian scene between the actress and Jennifer Gatti.
"That was my very first love scene, and it was with a woman," Pfeiffer points out. "I thought it was a great script, Claudia Hoover, the director, was really good. It was a film noir, and I loved the idea of for my first time on screen doing a love scene and having it be with another woman. Let's shake things up a bit - I'm kind of out there."
But as much as she loved the idea, actually filming a love scene with another woman with a full crew around was a challenge for Pfeiffer. "We both were really nervous in the sense that it's embarrassing," she says. "What I do with my personal life, whatever, but when it comes to being a professional in front of other people it becomes a whole different dynamic. When you're naked with another woman in front of a bunch of other people at 8 a.m., it's not the most sexy thing. People say, 'Wow, it looks really sexy' - it's called acting. You have to act. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to kick it with another girl it's not going to be at eight in the morning, cold, before breakfast - it's going to be on a Saturday night at 10 o'clock after a glass of wine or something. So for people to look at that scene and say, "Wow, that was sexy. I was turned on,' my reaction is to say, 'Thank you,' because what you really are watching is two actresses. Jennifer was engaged and planning her wedding list while we were doing that scene. I thought that was hysterical."
 Sadly, Pfeiffer didn't get it on with any other women in her first film, Vamp, although she did get to meet the seemingly immortal Grace Jones. "Vamp is my baby. I can't tell you who I worked with last week, but I can tell you who I worked with on that film, because it was one of the highlights of my professional life."
Singer and performance artist Jones - best known for her gender-bending roles in the James Bond adventure A View to a Kill and Conan the Destroyer - played a striking African vampire in the movie. "She was very wild, which was great for that role, the lead vampiress. She was very nice - I remember shaking her hand and thinking she was going to tear my hand off because she looked so tough, and it was actually very soft and gentle for a handshake."
Pfeiffer can be pretty soft herself, but she doesn't shy away from doing action if the role calls for it. "I've had to do a couple of stunts, not big ones," she says. "There was one movie where I'm running down a dirt road in these big heels and tight skirt, and I'm running away from the bad guy at 100 miles an hour, [then] I body slam off the car, bounce off it and roll down a hill. And I did it time and time again - then the guy grabs me and starts wrestling me, and they said it looked like a pit bull and a rottweiler because I don't fight like a normal girl, I just went after him like a guy. And he was a huge guy. He said, 'Honey, you can't hurt me,' but whan he got up he was scratched and scuffed and messed up. I'm very athletic and I talked to stunt guys, so I knew how to sell it. I always try to do my own stunts."
Maybe this athleticism traces its way back to the actress' high-school failure to make the cheerleading team. "I tried to do the cheerleading thing, but I failed dismally," she remembers. "I got nervous and messed up on the cheer. I got very bitter and, of course, I hated all the cheerleaders."
Unfortunately, Pfeiffer says making it as an actress can be almost as tough as making the cheerleading squad. "One of the toughest things to handle is all the rejection," she admits. "You're told 'NO' 500 times before you get your first 'YES.' I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to quit, but at the same time you say, 'Are you gonna get me? Hell no!' I'm such a stubborn Capricorn that I'll be damned if someone is going to make me run away and cry - I want to go in there and say, 'Dedee Fuckin' Pfeiffer, nice to meet you. Let's rock and roll.' All I can control is how I perform that day, and the rest is up to the gods."
Copyright Femme Fatales magazine 20040100 -- By Jeff Bond, Photography by Thai Tai |
