JAMIE ON THE I’M SCARED OF MY OWN SHADOW
Scream queen Curtis tells how she has felt real fear filming stomach-churning scenes for the Halloween franchise
JAMIE Lee Curtis is the ultimate scream queen and comes from true horror royalty – but admits she wouldn’t say boo to a goose. The 62-year-old has been part of the Halloween film franchise for 43 years.
She’s also the daughter of Psycho actress Janet Leigh, whose character Marion Crane’s murder in the shower is an iconic movie moment.
But while Jamie was referenced as the queen of horror in 1996 film Scream, in real life it’s all about the screaming.
She said: “I scare easily and if you Google pictures of me as a child, I look terrified. I’m going to show you the face I make in every single picture of me as a baby [she does a scared face].
“It’s as if somebody shouted at me, ‘Jamie!’ and I was like, ‘What?!’ If you look at pictures of me as a newborn baby, I look terrified.”
Jamie, whose dad was Tony Curtis, was 19 when she made her acting debut in the first Halloween movie in 1978. Since then she has starred as Laurie Strode, or appeared, in seven more of the 12-strong film franchise.
The latest, Halloween Kills, is released on Friday, with Halloween Ends out next year.
Jamie has also appeared in horror movies The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train and believes that not being a trained actress helped her show real fear in these films. She said: “I hate these movies. I loathe them and do not like to be frightened. I think that genuine, emotional connection to being afraid ... you are watching happen in real life on screen.
“Obviously we’re not psychiatrists here but I think if you really boiled it down, you might see the thing that made me successful in this genre is I scare easily – and naturally.
“So there is no psychological preparation, it’s just I’ve been traumatised. I’ve had sad things happen. I’ve had violent things happen. So all of these reactions are just natural manifestations of my own experience.”
While the fear may have been real, Jamie and the first Halloween movie director, John Carpenter, were criticised by women in the 70s for being antifeminist and because the only woman who didn’t die, Laurie, was a virgin.
Jamie said: “The women’s movement kind of hated me. Then I did Trading Places, took off my shirt and all of a sudden I was what they call ‘legitimate, an A-lister’.
“Today, the women’s movement would love Laurie Strode. But at that moment it was interesting for me as a young actress because I’m playing the very thing that we really, I think, respect, particularly about women – their strength and intelligence and ability to
shape shift. And fight back against the adversity that has been coming at them since the beginning of time. Women have done that. Yet somehow it was sort of anti-feminist. I thought that was always funny.”
There are big themes in Halloween – not least the trauma suffered by Laurie at the hands of serial killer Michael Myers.
The relentless murderer, who for the first two films wore a Captain Kirk mask painted white, has now become a guising staple.
While most horror films see the comeuppance of the baddie, in Halloween Kills the message is that there isn’t much hope as evil is still on the loose at the end.
After unstoppable Myers escapes from Laurie’s trap, she inspires the residents of Haddonfield to take matters into their own hands and hunt him down.
Jamie said: “I look at the news every day. No, there’s not much hope in many, many places in this world right now.
“It’s an incredibly difficult time and has always been an incredibly difficult time.
“Of course there’s always hope. Of course there are still good people trying to do good things but I think the film speaks to the times we’re in. We’re a divided world. In America, we’re a divided country. And I think that evil is seeming to win a bit.”
Directed by David Gordon Green – like 2018’s Halloween and next year’s Halloween Ends – the films have been ahead of their time.
In 2018, the #MeToo movement went global and Laurie’s brutal and harsh experience mirrored the trauma of a “wave of women coming into their own understanding of trauma and voicing it”.
Now, in 2021, Halloween Kills is about community rage against the machine – health, education and politics – and there’s a line in it, “The system is broken.” Jamie said: “People are rising up all over the world saying the system is broken.” So why, 43 years later, is Halloween still such a strong horror franchise?
Jamie – who became a Baroness, Lady HadenGuest, because of her marriage to Spinal Tap actor Christopher Guest – reckons it’s because it doesn’t rely on CG trickery. She said: “It’s brutality is real.”
However, Jamie isn’t just known for horror movies. She showed her comedy skills in Trading Places and won a Golden Globe for A Fish Called Wanda in 1988.
True Lies, in 1994, turned her into an action star in a role also remembered for the striptease her character gives her screen husband, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Her character, Helen, thinks she’s on a spy mission to seduce a man but it’s actually Arnie.
She said: “There was no rehearsal. I spent three days on set dancing like nobody was around. We were doing it over and over and over and it got quieter and quieter.”
Director James Cameron told Jamie to let go of the pole and fall.
She said: “It gets really quiet during that sequence because it’s a little sexy. Then when Helen falls and gets back up, oh my God, it will forever be the single biggest laugh I will ever get in my life.”
● Halloween Kills is released in cinemas on Friday.
All of these reactions are just natural
JAMIE LEE CURTIS ON HOW SHE DIDN’T FAKE IT IN HALLOWEEN MOVIES