Michelle Pfeiffer Quotes

“Acting's an odd profession for a young person; it's so extreme. You work, and the conditions are tough and the process is so immersive, and then it stops, and then there's nothing. So you have to find ways of making you feel productive when you're not actually producing anything. For a young person, that's really challenging.”

“And I'm a really happy person, I enjoy life. I think you see that on people. I think there's nothing more aging than misery.”

“Being a parent is the hardest thing in the world... the psychological toll it takes on you because these lives are in your hands. I take it very seriously.”

“Even though I don't feel I need approval, it's still important to me to give a good performance. I'm hard on myself.”

“Everybody is vulnerable to being in relationships where they get fooled. I'm no different. It's just human nature.”

“First of all, plain and simple, you have no real idea of what it means to be famous until you become famous. It's a double-edged sword. Obviously there are a lot of amazing things about fame, but there are also a lot of challenging things about it.”

“For me, getting comfortable with being famous was hard – that whole side of it, the loss of anonymity, the loss of privacy. Giving up that part of your life and not having control of it.”

“I act for free, but I demand a huge salary as compensation for all the annoyance of being a public personality. In that sense, I earn every dime I make.”

“I do find comedy difficult. I don't know why. Maybe I think about it too much. There's a tremendous amount of pressure to be funny.”

“I do portraits. I usually do live models in a class environment, but I've been painting at home more. I really love the human form, and I love faces. I've tried to do landscapes a few times.”

“I do think that, at one time, being an actress was the equivalent almost of being a prostitute. It garnered roughly the same respect. That's changed a lot, thank goodness.”

“I don't know if it's naivete or just narcissism, but I start out with this notion that I can do anything. It's not until I get into it that I realize what I've thrown myself into, and then I will do anything not to humiliate myself. And that, I think, is the secret to my success.”

“I feel less pressure to dress youthfully. I'm 50 and everyone knows I'm 50 – who are you kidding? Jeans are my uniform. I have about 15 pairs.”

“I guess I sort of just feel like I am lucky.”

“I have days when I just feel I look like a dog.”

“I like understanding what's underneath, what's really motivating people. When I was younger, I wanted to be a psychiatrist, so I think it has to do with that.”

“I look like a duck. It's the way my mouth curls up, or my nose tilts up. I should have played Howard the Duck.”

“I probably would like to do more than I do, because I love working, but I can't work more than I work because I have to do some facetime with the family, and the work that I do is just all-encompassing.”

“I said, going into acting, 'I'm never moving to L.A.,' because it scared me. But there was no way you could build an acting career in Orange County.”

“I say really stupid things sometimes. When I go back and watch some of my old interviews from when I was younger, I just cringe.”

“I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table.”

“I was kind of surprised to learn how controlling I am. I never thought of myself in that way. I think the root of the control issues is usually fear, because you want to know what's going to be happening at any given moment.”

“I worked so hard for so long – I did a lot of movies. I also worked a lot when my kids were smaller, before they were in school.”

“I'm a perfectionist, so I can drive myself mad – and other people, too. At the same time, I think that's one of the reasons I'm successful. Because I really care about what I do.”

“I'm a Taurus. To the bone.”

“I'm good at disguising my feelings.”

“I've been painting off and on since I was in sixth grade. I don't paint when I'm acting – I'm not really able to split my focus that way. I do it intensely when I'm doing it, but I'm reluctant to take myself too seriously as a painter because that would mean there would be pressure to be better than I am.”

“I've never met a person who has more integrity than my husband. I respect that. There's his humor and intelligence, too, and he's really cute, all those things – but if you don't respect your partner, you'll get sick of him.”

“It takes years for me to trust; I know that about myself. A lot of it is because I am so private, and so reluctant to make myself vulnerable.”

“It's harder to live the way I live. There are certain places I like to shop and eat where I simply don't go. The paparazzi follow you.”