Michelle Pfeiffer vs. Susan Sarandon
Battle of the Sultry Moms

We recently used this space to examine the question of what happens when a female actor, best known in her youth for playing bubbly Barbie body doubles, ages out of the bimbo class. (The short answer: it's not pretty.)

For female actors who were known, in their youth, to be talented performers, and who are now entering their twilight years (professionally speaking, that is), circumstances are different. An actress who racked up good reviews, box-office successes, or awards in her youth is still treated as a legitimate headliner well into her forties and beyond.

In other words, for Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon, life is pretty good. Well, sort of. Depending on how you look at it.

On the plus side of the column, both still work...a lot. Having started their careers along similar tracks, as ingénues in musicals (Sarandon in Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pfeiffer in Grease 2); eye candy in gritty flicks (Sarandon in Atlantic City, Pfeiffer in Scarface); and lovely apparitions in supernatural-themed movies (Sarandon in The Hunger, Pfeiffer in LadyHawke). Eventually their paths crossed, as the two joined with Cher to play the titular Witches of Eastwick. At that point Sarandon, at forty-one, was at just the right vintage to be believable as a repressed, disappointed spinster; Pfeiffer, a spry twenty-nine, was the baby of the group, all casual soccer-mom clothes and blonde naïveté.

From there, Pfeiffer and Sarandon both started making their way to the top of their game. Pfeiffer racked up Oscar nominations for her roles in Dangerous Liaisons, The Fabulous Baker Boys, and Love Field; Sarandon, having already been nominated for the aforementioned Atlantic City, added several more notches to her Oscar belt with Thelma and Louise, Lorenzo's Oil, The Client, and Dead Man Walking, for which she won. Between their various professional honours for their serious films, Sarandon and Pfeiffer showed their range by also starring in light but well-regarded comedies (Sarandon in Bull Durham, Pfeiffer in Married to the Mob). They've slummed it on TV (Sarandon on Friends and Malcolm in the Middle, Pfeiffer in a notorious cameo on Picket Fences), and crossed paths, sort of, again, both doing guest voices on The Simpsons.

Fourteen years after The Witches of Eastwick, both Pfeiffer and Sarandon are still firmly established both as actors and as celebrities; both are starring in current or upcoming movies (Pfeiffer in I Am Sam, Sarandon in the much ballyhooed Igby Goes Down). We're still on the plus side.

What's the minus? There's always a minus, isn't there? As far as we're concerned, the minus isn't so much the fault or concern of either actress -- just a fact of Hollywood casting that happens to have manifested itself in their vicinity. See, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon are both getting the same kinds of roles now. Like Michael Douglas and Richard Gere, they've become interchangeable. They've both entered a phase in their careers where they're heading up movies that, with a smaller budget and a star like Joanna Kerns or Sharon Lawrence, would be airing on Lifetime on a Sunday afternoon. Come on -- The Deep End of the Ocean? Safe Passage? They're such chick flicks that they really should not be presented to the public without being periodically interrupted for General Mills International Coffee and Monistat ads. And the movies are so similar that it doesn't matter who plays the attractive yet distraught mom; as long as she can work a tasteful, wheat-coloured cashmere sweater and cry on cue, the rest is gravy.

So the minus is that Hollywood has evidently pushed back the age of old/sexiness. Susan Sarandon will be fifty-six years old this year. Pfeiffer? A mere forty-four. And yet as far as casting directors are concerned, it seems, they're the same. For heaven's sake, Michelle Pfeiffer played Harrison Ford's wife two whole years ago! Isn't that usually a job for Anne Archer?

The career paths of Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon head in the same direction -- toward a door that's slowly closing. We like them both, so we hope they can find a way to kick that bitch wide open again.

Advantage: Sarandon, but only because she's got an Oscar in the bank.