She blazed a trail as gangsters’ molls and slinky lounge acts, then returned from a career break to essay a variety of wicked witches, comic turns and grand dames. Next month she’ll be seen as a penniless heiress in acclaimed
comedy French Exit. But which are her best roles?
Kenneth Branagh’s all-star revival of the classic Agatha Christie murder mystery gives us a traditional exotic cross-section of high society (with picturesque servants and bits of rough) on board the snowed-in Orient Express, on which someone has been whacked. The film has Pfeiffer in one of her late-career grande dame roles: the manhunting
American widow Mrs Hubbard, which she plays a little softer than Lauren Bacall, who had had the role in the 1974 version. Pfeiffer sang the melancholy Never Forget over the end credits, with lyrics by Branagh.