“One of the themes in The Madison is that it’s very hard to find that line of allowing your kids to stumble, allowing them to fall, to build character, build self-esteem,” Pfeiffer says. “When do you need to come in and swoop them up, give them support?” Sometimes, in real life as in The Madison, it’s the grandparents who step in with a little tough love. Pfeiffer recalls how her own grandmother, whom she adored, would sometimes intervene. “I had a certain kind of reverence for her, and I was a little afraid of her. She felt somehow more powerful than my mother. Maybe that just comes with getting older,” Pfeiffer says. “And I think, is it possible that she saw me sassing my mother, and that was her way of defending her daughter from me?” This is one example of how the people we used to be inform the people we grow up to be, something to which the best actors are attuned. Pfeiffer puts it all to use, seemingly without overthinking any of it. Come to think of it, that right there may be the definition of fearlessness.
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