Novelist Steve Erickson wrote that Pfeiffer had now threatened to turn out to be 1 of her generation's best American actresses by as early as her thirties. In a 2021 profile, Lynn Hirschberg of W wrote that Pfeiffer's greatest performances include a conflicted "female at war with herself", finding that she "has a way of pitting her characters' wit and self-consciousness in opposition to their flaws and trauma".