During Thursday night’s 35th anniversary screening of “Scarface” at the Tribeca Film Festival, moderator Jesse Kornbluth drew boos from the audience for asking Michelle Pfeiffer how much she weighed while filming the 1983 cult-classic gangster movie.
“As the father of a daughter, I’m concerned with body image,” Kornbluth asked Pfeiffer. “[During] the preparation for this film, what did you weigh?” Kornbluth was immediately booed prompting him to reply “this is not the question you think it is.”
“Well, okay. I don’t know,” responded Pfeiffer. “But I was playing a cocaine addict, which was part of the physicality of the part, which you have to consider.”
“As the shoot went on, I tried to time it so I became more and more emaciated. The problem is, the movie went six months and the climactic scene kept getting delayed,” added Pfeiffer. “The crew kept bringing me bagels because they were so worried about me.”
Kornbluth did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on Friday and defended his question in a statement provided to TheWrap.
“It is true that a gentleman should never ask a woman about her weight. But that was not my question. It is a comment on the knee-jerk political correctness of our time that no one would be shocked if you asked Robert De Niro about the weight gain required for his role in ‘Raging Bull’ but you get booed — not by many, but by a vocal few — for asking Michelle Pfeiffer about the physical two-dimensionality required for her to play a cocaine freak in ‘Scarface.’”