She’s known for keeping her private life under her hat. And up until recently, Michelle Pfeiffer has been sitting on a big secret – she’s a grandmother.
“I’ve been very quiet about it and it’s heaven,” the three-time Oscar-nominated star says of her granddaughter, born in 2024 to her daughter Claudia.
“If I had known I was going to be a grandmother, I wouldn’t have taken on so much work!”
Instead, though, the Dangerous Liaisons star is going through a long-awaited career renaissance, starring in not one, but two high-profile TV shows that remind fans just what they’ve been missing out on for all these years.
First up, The Madison – the latest offering from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan – dropped on Neon last month. Michelle, 67, leads the cast as wealthy New Yorker Stacy Clyburn who, after an earth-shattering tragedy, moves her extended family to the wilds of Montana.
From small screen drama to bold new roles
Then hot on its heels comes the Apple TV+ show Margo’s Got Money Troubles, in which Michelle plays Shyanne, a former Hooters waitress whose college-dropout daughter (played by Elle Fanning) finds herself in the family way and turns to OnlyFans to pay her bills.
The vastly different roles have one thing in common: they both required Michelle to team up with people she never expected to work with again. In the case of The Madison, her unexpected blessing
was sharing the screen with her Tequila Sunrise co-star Kurt Russell, 75.
A film she’d rather forget
He was the only good thing about making the 1988 romantic thriller, where the cinematographer was sacked, and Michelle and co-star Mel Gibson had a sex scene in a hot tub that left them with splinters and chemical burns.
“I did not have fun on that movie,” laughs Michelle.
“It was stressful and people were getting fired. I was like, ‘Fire me, please.’ But I couldn’t get fired.”
When schedules collide
While she was thrilled to be reunited with Kurt in The Madison, there was one major obstacle in the way. The production schedule directly conflicted with Kurt’s commitment to his other TV series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
In the end, Taylor, 55, came up with a cunning plan – they filmed all of Kurt’s scenes for season one of The Madison when the cast and crew returned to film the second season a year later. For Michelle, the scenes of her talking to Kurt (mostly on the phone) required her to generate the pair’s on-screen chemistry without him present.
She laughs, “In the end, I just decided, ‘Okay, it’s Kurt.’ And because I know him, that was pretty easy to conjure up.”
For Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Michelle teams up with another person she had purposefully not worked with for 33 years – her wildly successful television writer/producer husband, David E. Kelley. The pair have only collaborated on one project – the 1996 film To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, which David co-wrote and in which Michelle starred.
Their relationship was fast-tracked because Michelle was in the process of adopting her daughter Claudia, now 33, before she met David.
A whirlwind start to family life
She arrived two months after they began dating in 1993 and Michelle says, “He really rose to the occasion.”
They married that same year and soon welcomed their son John, now 31. With her acting credentials already well established, Michelle prioritised her children over her career for many years, to the point that one agent called her “Dr No”.
She recalls, “I was pretty careful about where I shot, how long I was away for, whether or not it worked out with the kids’ schedule. And I got so picky that I was un-hireable.”
Now it’s her time
She never regretted it, though, and now that she’s truly an empty nester, she says, “Now it’s my time.”
Michelle acknowledges she could easily have stepped into roles custom-made for her by David, but she was happier not to.
A rare yes to working together
“When I come home from work and I’ve had a bad day, I want him to be on my side,” she shares.
“I want him to believe my version.”
But the Scarface star made an exception for Margo’s Got Money Troubles, which drops on April 15, and David is thrilled.
“I could only see one person playing Shyanne,” he says.
“And we’re lucky enough that she said yes – the second luckiest yes I’ve gotten from her.”
Slowing down and savouring life
With her new TV shows done and dusted, Michelle says she’ll most likely take off the rest of 2026 to revel in being a grandmother.
“It’s an embarrassment of riches, honestly,” she says.
“I’m just really wanting my choices and the way I spend my time – whatever time I have left – to spend it meaningfully.”
