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SCREAM QUEEN?
I’M A BIG SCAREDY CAT! Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis has made a killing out of horror movies, but here she reveals why she daren’t watch one herself
For an astonishing 40 years now, Jamie Lee Curtis has been the official Hollywood Scream Queen thanks to the enduring Halloween franchise. But, oh the horror, she says she doesn’t like being scared in real life. ‘I scare very easily,’ she groans. ‘I know that might seem a stupid thing to say, because in many ways I’ve made my living from being scared. But in real life, I don’t like to be frightened. I find nothing charming about it and I’d hate to watch a horror movie.
‘I sleep like a baby at night and I like it that way. I sleep curled up in a ball like a very content child, and I want to continue doing so. The only thing that’d keep me awake would be something scary, and I don’t want that. I’ve always been this way. In our wedding vows, my husband and I promised we wouldn’t give each other surprise parties – a surprise party would send me to hospital!’
It’s an unexpected admission from Jamie, who played sweet-natured high school student Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s original Halloween and five of its ten sequels and spinoffs. Laurie has been stalked throughout by masked killer Michael Myers, and her terrified cowerings and ear-piercing shrieks proved so bone-chillingly convincing that they led to a mini-career for Jamie. In 1980 alone she released no fewer than three horror films – The Fog, Terror Train and Prom Night – and she has two more Halloweens, the highest-grossing horror film franchise of all time, in the pipeline.
She’s made other films along the way, notably A Fish Called Wanda in 1988, True Lies in 1994 and the upcoming star-studded murdermystery Knives Out. Released next month, it centres on the death of crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), who’s found murdered the day after his dysfunctional extended family arrive at his remote mansion for his 85th birthday. Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is called in to investigate, and soon everyone, including his daughter Linda, played by Jamie, becomes a suspect.
But she’s still best known as the horror queen. ‘Please understand, though, I don’t have a licence plate on my car that reads: Here Comes The Queen,’ she chuckles. ‘I don’t wear a crown or ask you to bow w he ni come into the room. It’s a name made up by the media and although I appreciate it, these days there are younger actresses more appropriate for that title. I’ve turned into the Dowager Queen, I’m happy to stay in the background and straighten their train.’
She was, of course, born into the world of Hollywood and horror. The daughter of screen legends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh – whose shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho set the benchmark for horror a generation before Jamie’s – she was offered the role of the girl possessed by a demon in The Exorcist when she was only 11, an opportunity her mother refused because she wanted Jamie to have a more normal childhood. ‘And you know what, I lived a very quiet country life up in Benedict Canyon in LA. We had big dogs, I fell down a lot roller-skating, I ran around. There was none of that Hollywood stuff.’
She was only 19 when Halloween was released in 1978, and says now that at the time she had no idea how it would affect her life. ‘It was a tiny low-budget movie, we filmed for just 20 days. No one expected anything, and it didn’t become a hit for a while. It wasn’t like it had an opening weekend and – boom! – all of a sudden I was popular. Even when it did become a hit, the only work I got after was one episode of The Love
Boat – with my mother! – and an episode of Charlie’s Angels where I played a golfer who was Cheryl Ladd’s best friend, and we ended up wrestling alligators. John Carpenter wrote the part in The Fog for me because he felt the success of Halloween had not translated into work for me, so I was in his next film.’
It must be said that, for someone who dislikes being frightened, she has been impressively convincing at portraying fear on screen. ‘When I’m working, everything has to seem real to me,’ she explains. ‘If I know I’m faking it, then I’m a fullon bad actress and I shouldn’t be doing it. Even if I don’t understand the thrill of a horror movie, I do understand that they have a legitimate audience who love them. They’re passionate about them, and I love them for that!
‘I’ve often felt horror movies are sort of the illegitimate child of showbusiness. They’re the son no one wants to talk about. But the work I’ve done in those movies is every bit as legitimate as my work in more mainstream films. I’m just as proud of it.’
In fact, she says, in some ways her duty in horror movies is to be even more realistic than in mainstream films. ‘The model for a horror movie is that you take something real from the everyday world and introduce into it something that’s not real. Many hundreds of millions of dollars, and many hundreds of movies, have been born from that basic model. But for you to care about what happens to the people in the “real” world, you have to believe in them. In Halloween, you first saw Laurie Strode walking down the street on a pretty autumn day with her girlfriends teasing her that she can’t get a boy. Then this sweet girl has something weird happen to her, and you’re afraid for her. But you have to care about her first.’
Besides, she adds, it’s not as if there aren’t real monsters out there. ‘There are so many things people sit on or hide from to pretend they’re not happening. You could see the horror movie as a metaphor for facing any problem you’ve had, be it an alcoor hol drug problem, an abusive relationship, an unfaithful relationship... there are myriad things. That’s why people cheer in horror movies when the woman grabs the axe to kill the killer. We need to face our fears and confront them head-on. To the death, if you will.’ n
‘A surprise party would send me to hospital’