Jamie Lee Curtis a screaming success in new Halloween
Jamie Lee Curtis is flying high as her 2018 Halloween sequel is a soaraway box-office hit
IT’S BEEN 40 years since she starred in one of the most terrifying horror movies of all time. Now she’s back guns blazing, and for fans who like getting the wits petrified out of them it’s worth every scream. The new Halloween is a monster hit: 104 minutes of bone-chilling, bloodcurdling nightmarishness where danger lurks at every turn – in a public bathroom, inside a child’s bedroom cupboard, outside on a trick-or-treat street.
The results speak for themselves. Halloween took $77,5 million (R1,1 billion) on its opening weekend and broke all sorts of records. And no one was more delighted than the star who played a big role in drawing the crowds in by the thousands.
“Okay, I’m going for one boast post,” Jamie Lee Curtis tweeted. “Biggest horror movie opening with a female lead. Biggest movie opening with a female lead over 55. Second-biggest October movie opening ever. Biggest Halloween opening ever. #womengetthingsdone.”
Jamie, who’ll turn 60 on 22 November, followed up her tweet – which was retweeted more than 30 000 times and received nearly 200 000 likes – by telling The New York Times she hadn’t meant it to “be an ego boost”.
“It was a moment of great pride for all of us. Let me be the bell-ringing, bannerwaving representative of generations of women who’ve been in the movie business and have got no recognition. Let me be the one who stands up and says, ‘We can do it, we did it and we’ll do it again’.”
In this #MeToo era, the new Halloween is spot on. Jamie’s character, Laurie Strode, is no longer a terrified young babysitter being persecuted by maniacal murderer Michael Myers like she was in the 1978 original. She’s now a steely-eyed grandmother who’s spent the better part of 40 years building up an arsenal and turning herself into a killing machine . . . just in case Michael ever escaped from the high-security institution for the criminally insane he’d been sentenced to.
Escape he does, and it’s Laurie’s job to protect her family from the man who’s terrorised her dreams and haunted her every waking moment.
“Women have suffered forever,” Jamie told the Sydney Morning Herald. “The abuse and oppression and violence – be it sexual violence, workplace manipulation or oppression – we’ve suffered it forever.
“This is a movie about one woman and her daughter and her granddaughter who face it.” And it’s damn scary. In fact, even the trailer is enough to give you nightmares. But perhaps most surprising of all is Jamie’s confession that she can’t stand horror movies
“There’s nothing about them you can entice me with. I don’t like to be frightened for anything. Life is scary enough for me.”
JAMIE was riding the crest of her box- office success when she dropped a bombshell: she’d been addicted to opioids for years during the ’90s after she started taking pain medication following minor
surgery to minimise her puffy eyes.
“I was ahead of the opiate epidemic,” she told US People magazine. “I had a 10year run, stealing, conniving. No one knew. No one.”
Her sister Kelly (62) – whose painkillers Jamie stole when Kelly was recuperating at her house after a rib injury – finally found out in 1998 and the following year Jamie started rehab.
By speaking out now, she says, she’s hoping to “break the cycle that’s basically destroyed the lives of generations in my family”.
Jamie’s dad, Some Like It Hot star Tony Curtis, who died in 2010 aged 85, abused alcohol, cocaine and heroin, while her half-brother, Nicholas, died from a heroin overdose in 1994 aged 23.
“Getting sober remains my single greatest accomplishment,” she says. “It’s bigger than my husband, bigger than both of my children and bigger than any work, success, failure. Anything.”
She’s now been sober for 20 years and leads a relatively quiet life with her husband, Christopher Guest – a screenwriter and director best known for the comedies This Is Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman – whom she married in 1984.
When asked for the secret to the longevity of her marriage, Jamie replied, “Don’t get divorced. It’s a fascinating thing. I could write a book on marriage called Don’t Leave.”
She and Christopher (70) have two adopted children, Annie (31) and Thomas (22), and Jamie admits to not having been the best mother when her daughter was little.
“I’ve been an inconsistent parent at times and it’s my greatest regret. When my daughter was small I worked too much. I was replicating what my own mother did.”
Her mom, actress Janet Leigh, who died in 2004 aged 77, is best known for
Ithe 1960 horror classic Psycho and screaming her lungs out in the shower when Norman Bates arrives with his huge knife.
It’s one of the reasons why Jamie has an aversion to the horror genre. She hasn’t ever watched 1979’s Alien, she says.
“And Sigourney Weaver [the movie’s star] is one of my close friends. I just can’t.” N THE Halloween sequel Jamie looks every one of her years – no soft lighting or flattering make-up here.
She’s made peace with the ageing process, she says, but it took a while. Back in the ’80s she was the poster girl for fitness and sex appeal, wowing in legwarmers in 1985’s Perfect with her cropped hair and impeccably toned bod.
In 1988’s A Fish Called Wanda she lit up the screen with her dewy-eyed, glossy-lipped sex appeal – and John Cleese as hapless barrister Archie Leach didn’t stand a chance.
She turned to the knife for help, she admitted to The Telegraph, but she regrets it.
“Nobody tells you if you take fat from your body in one place it comes back in another place. All of these ‘ bettering’ experiences aren’t without risk. And there’s this illusion that once you do it then you’ll be fine – that’s just horse s**t. I looked worse.” These days Jamie is all about keeping it real. She doesn’t think her thighs are great and she has “a soft little tummy” and back fat. “I’ve etched out who I am through myriad haircut attempts, outfit attempts, beauty attempts, diet attempts. It’s been an evolution. I’ve let my hair go grey.” The two-time Golden Globe winner, who’s also a children’s author of 13 books, devotes herself now to being healthy and feeling good. “I get up at five o’clock in the morning every day, filled with energy. I play tennis three times a week and I do yoga. I’m never going to be an athlete, I’m not that person. “But I walk with girlfriends and walking is incredibly good for you.” Like the fearless Laurie Strode, Jamie isn’t afraid of getting older. “If I can challenge old ideas about aging I’ll feel more and more invigorated. I want to represent this new way. I want to be a new version of the 70-year-old woman. Vital, strong, very physical, very agile. I think that the older I get the more yoga I’m going to do.” Take that, slasher flicks. Read our Halloween review on page 60.