Pfeiffer reveals that she started acting in high school in order to get out of an English class, but at the time she didn’t consider it a career choice. She explains, “I took theater to avoid taking an English course because I was terrible in English. And all of the kids in the theater department were thought of as being the strange kids on campus. But I felt right at home, which meant, I suppose, that I was one of those strange kids on campus. But nobody told me. And I loved it. I ditched every other class but that one. But I didn’t think about it seriously because it wasn’t in my reality at all. Then I went to court reporting school and started working at Vons supermarket.”
She admits that stenography school was simply her trying to find something to do. She says, “I didn’t know what else to do. And my friend’s mother was a stenographer. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll try that.’ I didn’t like it. So then I was working at Vons supermarket. I was a checker. And I got kind of frustrated there. I remember distinctly standing in the check stand in a fit of desperation and wanting to tell one of these customers where they could shove this cantaloupe. I thought to myself, ‘What do you want to do with the rest of your life?’ And it was acting.”
Pfieffer admits that her acting and performing skills haven’t changed much over the years, and it’s something she remains self-critical about. She says, “I didn’t have any formal training. I didn’t come from Juilliard. I was just getting by and learning in front of the world. So I’ve always had this feeling that one day they’re going to find out that I’m really a fraud, that I really don’t know what I’m doing… I’ve taken a lot of workshops, worked with some really masterful teachers, and I don’t know that my method has actually changed from the beginning. I still work pretty instinctually—it’s a little bit like hearing the rhythm of the character in your head.”
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