Michelle Marie Pfeiffer, born April 29, 1958, is an American actress and producer. She began her acting career in 1978, and had her first leading role in the musical film Grease 2. She went on to receive mainstream attention for her breakthrough performance as gangster moll Elvira Hancock in Brian De Palma’s crime thriller Scarface. Take a look below for 30 more interesting and fun facts about Michelle Pfeiffer.

1. Her roles in Dangerous Liaisons, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Love Fields, garnered her three Academy Award nominations.

2. She found major critical and popular acclaim for her performance of Catwoman in Tim Burton’s superhero movie Batman Returns.

3. Pfeiffer received her first Emmy Award nomination for portraying Ruth Madoff in the HBO television movie The Wizard of Lies, and garnered further critical acclaim for her roles in Mother! and Murder on the Orient Express.

4. She was born in Santa Ana, California, the second of four children of Richard Pfeiffer, an air conditioning contractor, and Donna, a housewife.

5. Pfeiffer has one older brother, Rick, and two younger sister, Dedee, who’s a television and film actress, and Lori.

6. Her parents were both originally from North Dakota. Her paternal grandfather was of German ancestry and her paternal grandmother was of English, Welsh, French, Irish and Dutch descent, while her maternal grandfather was of Swiss-German descent and her maternal grandmother was of Swedish ancestry.

7. Pfeiffer attended Fountain Valley High School, graduating in 1976.

8. She worked as a check-out girl at Vons supermarket, and attended Golden West College, where she was a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.

9. After a short stint training to be a court stenographer, she decided upon an acting career.

10. In 1978, Pfeiffer won the Miss Orange County beauty pageant and participated in the Miss California contest the same year, finishing in sixth place.

11. She thought about looking for a man to father a child with “no strings attached,” but decided to adopt instead. She adopted a daughter called Claudia Rose.

12. She studied acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

13. While a teenage clerk at Vons Grocery Store in California, Pfeiffer learned to tie maraschino cherry stems in knots with her tongue.

14. She accidentally cut Al Pacino with broken glass while auditioning for Scarface.

15. Pfeiffer studied acting under Geraldine Page at a workshop at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles.

16. Her first job as a performer was playing Alice from Alice in Wonderland at Disneyland in the Main Street Electrical Parade in the mid-1970s.

17. During an A&E Biography episode, she said that her Catwoman costume from Batman Returns was vacuum-sealed once she was fitted into it for scenes, so she actually had only a short amount of time to perform before she would have to have it opened or she could become light headed and pass out.

18. Barbara Walters called her and Julia Roberts the most beautiful people she has ever interviewed.

19. She turned down the role of the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She was the only major Hollywood star offered the role.

20. Pfeiffer was considered for the role of Eva Peron in Evita, and when the movie was to be directed by Oliver Stone, she even had taken a good few months voice training for the role.

21. She was the original choice for Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, but turned it down because she found it too violent. Jodie Foster was cast instead and won an Oscar for the role.

22. She has been very good friends with Cher since working together on The Witches of Eastwick.

23. One of her favorite movies is The Wizard of Oz.

24. When she was in her twenties, strangers would come up to her thinking she was Debbie Harry from the band Blondie. Not surprisingly, Harry stated in an interview that if she could choose any actress to play her in a movie, she would choose Pfeiffer.

25. She was considered for the lead role in Mamma Mia! that eventually went to Meryl Streep.

26. Pfeiffer was considered for a part in Working Girl along with Meryl Streep. The roles eventually went to Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver.

27. Passion of Mind was originally developed for Pfeiffer in the late 1980s, but by the time it was finally ready to go into production a decade later, she was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, and the movie became a vehicle for Demi Moore.

28. She briefly considered taking on the lead role in the boxing drama Against the Ropes. When Pfeiffer passed, Meg Ryan was cast in the movie, which went on to become a failure at the box office.

29. In January 1993, Pfeiffer was set up on a blind date by her best friend and former producing partner Kate Guinzburg, with television writer and producer David E. Kelley, who took her to the movies to see Bram Stoker’s Dracula the following week, and they began dating seriously. They married on November 13, 1993.

30. Having been a smoker for 10 years, and having a niece who suffered from leukemia for 10 years, Pfeiffer decided to support the American Cancer Society.