‘At school I just couldn't wait to get out. I was really bored. I wish I had had someone like LouAnne. Her trick is that she doesn't try to teach them she tries to enliven their own desire to learn and their excitement and enthusiasm about learning. I was lucky to see LouAnne teach a class but my presence becomes a bit disruptive. They start paying more attention to me than to her. The closest thing I could really get to her experience was talking to her and spending time with her. ‘It can be more difficult to portray a real person because one feels a responsibility to that individual. In a few instances where artistic license needed to be taken and we needed to alter something in some slight way I always felt that I had to stay within the truth of LouAnne's story.' For Dedee Pfeiffer it is staying within the limits of American television's good taste ‘judges' -- some say banshees -- that is the problem for her hit show ‘Cybill'. The series is a vehicle for Cybill ‘Moonlighting' Shepherd. She's cast as a fortysomething actress coping with a career, two ex-husbands, two daughters and a hard-drinking best friend played by the scene-stealing Christine Baranski who has already established herself as America 's version of absolutely fab ‘Patsy'. In politically correct America -- especially American television -- it is a tightrope every week for the series which, in the U.S. at least, lives up to its billing as a ‘bawdy adult comedy'. Dedee loved it from the start:' I was sent the script and I laughed hysterically. I really wanted to do it and auditioned. I kept going back and back and then they started asking me back and I got the role of Rachel which is great. ‘ She's in her jeans and halter top and the family blonde hair -- there's Sweden somewhere in the genetics geography -- at the CBS TV Studios at the wrong end of Los Angeles where the show is filmed. She is more casual than her sister. There have not been so many bumps on her road to attention. But from her start she has boasted a famous surname? ‘It opens doors but it doesn't guarantee you getting the kind of parts that you want. I think there is a natural curiosity always. When I was called in about parts by people who hadn't seen my prior work there was definitely the curiosity factor. ‘They say:'' Let's call her in to see if she really is a miniature version of Michelle'' . They found out quickly that is not what walked in the door. After that I was either right for the role or I wasn't. ‘I can understand people thinking I might be a miniature version but the only real similarity is that we come from the same family.' Dedee has worked in the spotlight for some years but not in the intense one which beams on her sister. She's been on ‘Seinfeld', guest-starred in an episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote' and had a cameo role opposite Michael Douglas in ‘Falling Down' as well as ‘Red Surf' with George ‘E.R.' Clooney. She agrees her first taste of the big league was with her sister in ‘Frankie and Johnny' in 1991. The remake of the stage success also starred Al Pacino. Was she intimidated by the legendary actor? ‘ I was more nervous with Michelle thany any big stars. It's because she is my sister and I look up to her so much. I thought it would be the easiest thing ever but I was so nervous I could barely get the lines out.' Michelle Pfeiffer can barely spit her words out when she reveals that she abdicated the title role of ‘Evita' to Madonna. Her star has sparkled with so many roles including ‘The Age of Innocence', ‘Married to the Mob', ‘Love Field' and, memorably, as tarnished chanteuse Suzie Diamond ‘Makin' Whoopee' slithering across a piano in ‘The Fabulous Baker Boys' . But it was her role as Catwoman in ‘Batman Returns' ( ITV, 9pm ,on Thursday, October 26) that brought her an astonishing worldwide following. At the same time she had adopted daughter Claudia Rose becoming a single mother ( if you don't count her friend Cher as a helpmate). Then she married producer David Kelley and in July,1994, and a year after adopting she gave birth to their son John Henry. She repeats again that she's happy --but tired -- as she sits in a splendid lounge of a hotel in Beverly Hills . Given her exhaustion she's quite appropriately in Armani ‘fatigues'. We are talking about school children -- and babies. Motherhood? ‘It's more than I ever hoped for and it's also far more demanding than I could have ever anticipated. It demands more of you than you ever thought you could ever provide. But you get back what you put into it.
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