Water world - Michelle Pfeiffer

Hollywood legend has it Janet Leigh was so unnerved the first time she saw her famous shower scene in Psycho that she has taken only baths ever since. On a similar note, no one could blame Michelle Pfeiffer if she opted to stick with taking showers for a while in the wake of What Lies Beneath, the new supernatural thriller that features the actress in a number of perilous bathtub sequences. "I've never liked being in the water much, period. The only thing I've ever found any pleasure in was taking a nice warm bath, which I love a lot, so I'm happy to say I have bathed and been able to put the movie behind me in that sense," Pfeiffer says during a recent interview. "Actually, those other scenes we did in and around and under the lake were a lot more taxing for me. If you asked me had I been swimming again since working on this, that would be another matter."

A ghost story about a seemingly happy marriage undone by the haunting spirit of the husband's dead mistress, What Lies Beneath (which opened last week) has all the makings of a sure-fire summer hit — chills, thrills, Pfeiffer at the top of her form, Harrison Ford as we've rarely seen him before and everything slickly programmed by Robert Zemeckis, the director of such blockbusters as Back to the Future and Forrest Gump. What more could audiences ask for in their escapist movies?

Pfeiffer, 43, admits the "horror-movie" connotation initially gave her pause. "I had some reservations going into this, and if it hadn't been for working with somebody like Robert Zemeckis, I don't think I would've done it. I mean, they're risky movies to do. It's hard to make them work, which is why a lot of times they resort to a slasher mentality when they're trying to be scary," the actress observes.

After a pause, she adds, "It's true this film plays primarily on an entertainment level, that it's mainly a fun, exciting ride, but if you want to delve a little deeper, I think it also works on another psychological level."

Maybe, although Pfeiffer wouldn't go so far as to say that the experience of making the movie made a paranormal believer out of her. "You know, I can't say I believe in ghosts or haunted houses or whatever, but neither am I a disbeliever. I just haven't had it proved to me one way or the other," she says. "It's weird, because I've known enough people in my own life who believe, and I've no reason not to believe them, but it is kind of a hard thing to accept."

So it goes for Claire Spencer, the character Pfeiffer plays in What Lies Beneath. It's the sort of role that allows the actress to "run the gamut of emotions," as she puts it, when Claire thinks she's simply hallucinating everything in the earlier segments of the film. Later, as Claire comes to realize she's not just dreaming, the movie also turns into what Pfeiffer calls "one of the most physically demanding things I've ever done."

And yet, What Lies Beneath is Pfeiffer's idea of "taking it easy," at least in the sense that she's merely acting in the film as opposed to producing it. She founded her own production company five years ago — during which time she has starred in and produced a series of box-office disappointments (including One Fine Day, A Thousand Acres and The Deep End of the Ocean) — but now she's in the process of dissolving it.

"I never expected any of those films to be huge blockbusters, but I thought maybe a few people would go to see them. It's really crushing, because I'd invested so much time and effort in them, you know? It's much easier to let that sort of stuff roll off your back when you're just an actor-for-hire. I mean, sure, I care about What Lies Beneath being successful, but if I'd also produced it, I'd care a whole lot more," Pfeiffer says with a laugh.

"It doesn't mean I'll never produce again, but I really just want to act for a while," she says. "Part of my overall plan right now is to try simplifying my life. Producing is such an ongoing, non-stop, time-consuming process. I just felt I never got away from the work, that I never had any downtime to completely recharge between projects. It was sort of diminishing my joy of acting in a way, so I knew I had to make a change."