KEEPING HER HEAD ABOVE WATER

Michelle Pfeiffer loves taking baths. Or she used to. “I’m a real bath-taker,” says the Oscar-nominated actress. “But I have to say I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to!”

The reason for this is the two weeks Pfeiffer spent filming a variety of bathtub scenes for Robert Zemeckis’ new film, What Lies Beneath, in which she plays a woman who is contacted by a ghost with a water obsession. And she admits that, while her character was battling phobias of a quite different kind, she had to struggle against her own fear of being underwater.

“I’ve never been a water lover and I’ve always been paranoid about going under, because I can’t hold my breath long,” she explains. Still, the 42-year-old actress braved the elements and spent nearly one third of the film soaking wet. But she drew the line at being dragged to the bottom of a lake. Instead, the production built a replica on the Universal backlot in Los Angeles. And, to prepare her for those additional two weeks of filming, Zemeckis hired a scuba diver to teach his star how to be more comfortable underwater.

“At first I panicked each time I had to go under,” she says, “but eventually I began enjoying the lessons and the experience.” Or she did as long as she still had use of the mask and breathing-tube. “When they took those away from me, I immediately went back into panic mode,” she laughs.

“I’ve always been on the lookout for a type of supernatural suspense thriller,” says Zemeckis, “but they are very difficult to find. What I liked about this script was that it was much more of a psychological thriller, which is something you don’t see much any more. Any time a script can keep me turning pages, that’s a major sign for me,” he adds. “That doesn’t happen often in major Hollywood movies.”

What happens even less frequently is to get such a script from a first-timer. But screenwriter Clark Gregg is a 36-year-old writer with no previous credits under his belt. And, while most scripts are bought, then sent through rewrite hell with any number of writers, Zemeckis stuck with Gregg.

“It’s the writer’s inspiration that got the project to the place where people envisioned it as a film in the first place,” he points out. “I believe it is smart to stick with the original writer and let him work with you through the changes.”