Michelle Pfeiffer

Name: Michelle Pfeiffer
Born: 29 April 1958 (Age: 52)
Where: Santa Ana, California, USA
Height: 5' 9"
Awards: Won 1 BAFTA, 1 Golden Globe, nominated for 3 Oscars.

When halle berry won Best Actress at the 2002 Oscars many talked of the tough time she'd had transforming herself from a Beauty Pageant Queen into a top-line artist. It had indeed been a hard road, but one that had been travelled before, most notably by Michelle Pfeiffer. One of very few actresses capable of carrying a movie on her own, she rose from extremely lowly and sometimes dangerous beginnings to form a great female film-star triumverate with meryl streep and Jessica Lange. So respected is she by her peers that all the men would have her as their screen partner - from mainstream super-idols like harrison ford to indie mavericks like sean penn. And they have good reason - she can do it all.

She was born in Santa Ana, California, near Huntingdon Beach, on the 29th of April, 1958. Her father, Richard, was a heating and air-conditioning contractor. Her mother, Donna, was a housewife, looking after Michelle, her elder brother Rick, and two younger sisters, Dedee and Lori. Dedee would become an actress too but, far more flamboyant than the shy Michelle, would often court controversy, in 2002 even stripping off and simulating sex with some fellow in Playboy.

Richard and Donna had moved to California from North Dakota to escape the fall-out of post-WW2 depression. Their heritage makes Michelle a mix of Swedish, German, Dutch, Irish and Swiss ("I'm kind of a mutt", she's said). Resolutely blue collar and with Richard a strict authoritarian, they eventually settled the family in Midway City.

Incredibly, given her professional reputation now, Michelle was a horror of a child. Attending Fountain Valley High School, she was constantly ribbed for having big lips and walking like a duck - taunts that would make her insecure about her looks well into her thirties. Nicknamed Michelle Mudturtle (a name she actually rather likes), she became violently defensive, and a bully. The biggest in her class and wearing an inappropriately cute pixie hairdo, she made a habit of bashing everyone, even the boys, often stepping in to settle other people's disputes. "I was a rotten kid," she said later "just rotten. If anyone needed anyone beaten up they would come and get me". She was "not terribly feminine" and, believing boys only liked little girls with ringlets and beatific smiles, was taken aback in Fourth Grade when she found the most popular boy in class had a crush on her. Very stubborn, she'd mouth off constantly, putting on quite a performance - her mother coming to know her as "my little actress".