Sixteen years after the release of the original film, which has become an enduring cult classic, New Line Cinema is bringing a feature film adaptation of the Tony award-winning Broadway production Hairspray to life. Featuring new and original material based on John Waters’ 1988 cult classic about star-struck teenagers on a local Baltimore dance show, the comedy features a remarkable collection of talent including John Travolta (who plays a woman), Queen Latifah, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, Allison Janney, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, and Elijah Kelley. Best of all, Hairspray features the return to the silver screen of Michelle Pfeiffer.

Considering she is one of the most well-known and highest paid actresses, it was a big decision for Michelle Pfeiffer to take five years off from acting. Back in 2002, her children were no longer toddlers, but she spent the last half decade with her nine-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son until they turned 13 and 12 respectively last year.

It proved to be quality time. Living in Northern California with her husband, television producer David E. Kelley, Pfeiffer enjoyed a quiet family life. "I think it’s helped us as a family to be less distracted and David and I to be less distractive as parents, even though I think we were pretty good when we lived [in Hollywood] too," she told Dish. "But I think we wanted to have more land and we wanted to have animals on our property and you couldn’t do that there.You can pick a worse place than Hollywood. It’s just a different kind of lifestyle we were looking for, to try something different."

It is a great luxury for an actor to take four years off and still get work as soon as she wants to come back. Kelley keeps his hands in the biz by producing multiple shows and writing the majority of scripts for each one.

"Well, he’s a writer/producer and he has a lot of people who are handling a lot of the producing part of it," Pfeiffer explained. "He primarily writes a lot and he can write really anywhere he is so it works out pretty well. But he does commute to L.A. a lot. Once a week he’ll come down, or every few weeks. It works out pretty well, and people come up there and it’s not that far."

Family remains involved in Pfeiffer's career. When she took the role of Velma von Tussle in Hairspray, Pfeiffer felt a family sit down was in order. Velma is the producer of a dance show in the '60s who does not even want overweight girls on her show, let alone African-Americans integrated on the air.

"I talked to the family because certainly I understood that the message of the piece was really important. Certainly the message of the movie is anti-racism and anti-bigotry. Anyway, we talked because I wanted to make sure they understood that look, this is what the movie’s about, it’s a really important movie and in order to do a movie about racism, somebody has got to be the racist and it’s me. They were okay, they got it."

Unfortunately, the issues underlying the farcical Hairspray still face today's society, as they did in the '60s, as they did when John Waters made the 1988 original, as they did when Broadway producers first turned it into a musical.

"Even more frightening to me was the only reason another version of the story got made again is because it’s still relevant. I am hoping that the next time somebody decides to do their version of Hairspray, someone will say, 'You know what. It’s really kind of an outdated idea and not really relevant today.' Wouldn’t that be nice? The bigger picture of the movie is really about that we need to stop being so threatened by anything that is different and out of our comfort zone. When we find something that is outside of our comfort zone that is basically unknown, not like me, I don’t understand it, I better squash it. It’s that sort of accepting of people’s differences.

Just because she is the villain does not mean that Pfeiffer missed out on any of the fun. Hairspray is full of peppy dance numbers and even the evil queen gets to belt out a few tunes herself.

"I think it does such a good job without being heavy-handed,” Pfeiffer told me. It’s just sort of you being entertained and having such a good time and this really important message is just being wafted over you without you even realizing it. I had a lot of fun playing the part even though there were some lines I honestly could not remember because they were so hateful. Literally I’d be doing the scene and…. I’m coming up blank. It was interesting what my brain did. I’ve played some evil characters before. I’ve played some killers and I signed on to do this and then I sort of inched my way towards this character which was hard. Then one day, of course I knew it, but it registered, ‘oh my God I’m playing a racist’. That was really hard. I started to second guess doing it."

Those family talks are not a staple of Pfeiffer's career either. Usually her work is self-explanatory. "I don’t normally, unless there’s something that I feel might affect them in some way and something that might cause them embarrassment and might cause them to be uncomfortable in any way. Then I would discuss it with them."

Velma is molding her daughter in her own image. Young Amber von Tussle (Brittany Snow) sports the same blond tresses, the same fashion, and the same idea of being thin and white. In real life, Pfeiffer is careful to impart healthy wisdom.

"I think it is equally important to be resilient and to be empathetic. I think if you can raise kids to embody those two qualities, then they will have a rich and successful life."

Hairspray is also a fashion bonanza with its frilly '60s dresses and curls spinning from ladies' heads. Today, Pfeiffer keeps it simple in a black sheer V-neck blouse over a black camisole, and dark jeans down to her black heels. Guess which one she prefers?

"Honestly, that era is not my favorite for women. I do think that the clothes are beautiful but when I look at women from that era, all I can think of is how uncomfortable they look. It’s just like everything is so fitted, so pressed, and the makeup is so heavy and the hair is all sprayed and the clip-on earrings, the shoes. It just looks like it hurts, and it did. Your feet were killing you and your ears were on fire."

Not that modern fashion is a picnic. Perhaps the all black look is the best alternative. "Fashion is so confused today. I don’t even know what to say about it. You can see it’s just like leftovers or something. I’m not loving it right now."

While Velma may be obsessed with the perfect thin, blonde look, Hairspray asserts that big is beautiful. Newcomer Nikki Blonsky plays plump Tracy Turnblad and John Travolta dons a feminine fat suit to play her mom, Edna. Again, as the villain, Pfeiffer can facilitate the positive by embodying the negative.

"Young women have such a big challenge ahead of them now and the trend doesn’t seem to be going away nor does it seem to be getting better. And I know the fashion industry is sort of trying to make efforts but it sort of feels half-hearted. And the truth is, it’s women doing it to each other. I don’t think men really want women to be doing all of this stuff to themselves and to be undernourished and bony and getting sort of grotesque plastic surgery. So it’s like ‘why are we doing this to each other and for each other?’"

Finally, there is the singing and dancing. "I had to adapt to a new way of singing and the kind of discipline about that that I didn’t have. And [I had to re-]train my voice because my voice had just gone to seed. Then I had to lip sync and learn to dance in those shoes that were killing my feet. Then we go into the thing and now I have to do the baton so it was a lot to be thinking about in one day."

Pfeiffer had not done a musical since 1982's Grease 2 and had not sung since 1989's The Fabulous Baker Boys. "This is harder and I think I know why. I think because I was playing a lounge singer who sang, so when I sang those songs it was my rhythm, my interpretation, I fell into sort of a natural performance and interpretation of those lyrics whereas with this, I was sort of confined to a certain melody, a certain tempo, it was unchangeable. The character [of the music] was way different. Susie Diamond was probably closer to me so it was harder.”

If you can't get enough of Michelle Pfeiffer in Hairspray, next month brings another film featuring a villainous Pfeiffer. In Stardust, Pfeiffer plays a witch pursuing a fallen star, whom the romantic hero is rescuing. That film costars Robert DeNiro, Claire Danes, Sienna Miller and Charlie Cox. Participating in such ensembles makes the work load easier.

"When I look at doing something and have to be away from the kids if it’s at a time when they can’t come with me, like during the school year, then I need to be able to come back and forth. I need to not be away from more than a week or two. That’s sort of my limit. [That] probably has had a lot of influence over my choices, too."

Hairspray opens July 20, 2007. Visit the official website at www.hairspraymovie.com to check out all the zany action!