SCREAM QUEEN
Jamie Lee Curtis returns to the new Halloween and embraces her horror-ific roots. his may come as a shock, but Jamie Lee Curtis is not a fan of horror films, never really cut loose on Halloween night and doesn’t particularly like being scared.
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Yes, that Jamie Lee Curtis, who was catapulted to stardom in the horror classic Halloween 40 years ago, who became a teenage scream queen—the first, really—in the movie that launched a whole new genre of contemporary horror about young people terrorized by boogeymen. She returns to the throne in grand form this month in the new Halloween (Oct. 19), as Laurie Strode, the same iconic character she played in the first film. And once more, she’s locked in a desperate struggle with the masked, almost supernatural Michael Myers, who just keeps coming back, again and again, to finish what he started back in 1978.
Curtis has appeared in four other sequels to the original film and, after “surviving” the first night stalking by Myers, went on to appear in other horror flicks, including The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train (all released in 1980). Then, as recently as 2015, she delighted viewers in a regular role as Dean Cathy Munsch on TV’s campyvampy Scream Queens.
Certainly, she made numerous delightful, non-horror movies too—including Trading Places (1983), True Lies (1994), A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Freaky Friday (2003). But she clearly knows where her bread is buttered. Everything in her life, she says, is “the direct result” of Halloween and its scary spawn. “Every good thing that ever happened to me,” says Curtis, 59, “was because I was in horror films.” But she’s never really been a fan of things that go bump in the night. “I don’t love the genre,” she says of fright flicks. “But I’m grateful to the genre.”
Hollywood Kid
We are relaxing in the kitchen of her spacious, white-on-white house on the west side of Los Angeles. It’s not far from where Curtis grew up, across town in Palm Springs, with her two famous parents, actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. But even though her parents were Hollywood royalty, their seemingly picture-perfect marriage was on the rocks by the time Jamie came along in 1958 to join her sister, Kelly, older by two years. Part of the friction might have been the frustration they felt at the lack of professional recognition from Hollywood, she says.
There were no Oscars on their mantelpiece, in spite of her parents’ success and popularity. For
her memorable role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, her mom received fame and an Oscar nomination, but did not win. Her father, who acted in more than 100 films, was acclaimed for his roles in Spartacus, The Boston Strangler, Some Like
It Hot and The Defiant Ones, among many others, but got few nominations and no wins.
“I think both of my parents were disappointed,” she says. “His disappointment turned sour and hers got quiet. The greatest lesson I got is [an award] can’t be the goal, because you will always be disappointed.”
Halloween at her house was never a big deal—certainly nothing to suggest she’d ever become the queen of the haunted holiday. It was “fun to put on costumes and run around,” she says, but “I have no scary memories of Halloween.”
Her mom remarried—to a non-actor, former U.S. Marine and later securities innovator Robert Brandt—and the union lasted 42 years, until Leigh’s death in 2004. Tony Curtis had five wives after Janet Leigh, and wasn’t around much, she says.
Acting by Accident
After high school, Curtis enrolled in a local college, the University of the Pacific, but she didn’t stay long. “I left college in six months and became an actress by accident—by accident! I was gonna
be a social worker or a cop.”
By chance, she ran into a girlfriend’s father, a tennis-instructorturned-agent. He got her an audition to play Nancy Drew for a new TV series, and while she wasn’t chosen, he encouraged her to stick with it. Curtis acted with her mom, Janet Leigh, in two movies—The Fog (1980) and one of the Halloween sequels, H20: 20 Years Later (1998)—and on an episode of TV’s The Love Boat. “My mother was a fantastic actress, incredibly beautiful, sweet and kind to people. And she was a great role model for me,” Curtis says. “Grounded, down-to-earth.”
She did, and landed a sevenyear contract with Universal Pictures.
Not that her life was a bed of roses. She speaks openly about her battle with alcoholism and is proud of the fact that she has been sober since 1999. And she is also proud of her marriage to filmmaker and actor Christopher Guest (This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, The Princess Bride). They’ll celebrate anniversary number 34 in December.
Guest, 70, stops in the kitchen to say hello. “He’s funny, I’m funny,” she says. “We still figure
it out.” Their daughter, Annie, 31, a dance teacher, and son, Thomas, 22, who works for a gaming company, have left the nest. “They both live in Los Angeles, and they both are doing work that they love,” she says.
Creative Calls
Curtis is doing work she loves too—and it isn’t all acting. She’s also actively involved in other pursuits, including her inventions (she was granted two patents involving disposable, biodegradable diapers), charitable work, expressing her thoughts in columns for HuffPost and writing children’s books. Her 12th and latest is Me, Myselfie & I: A Cautionary Tale, illustrated by longtime collaborator Laura Cornell.
But things always seem to come back around to movies, as they will this month with
Halloween. The film will be a new benchmark for her, a homecoming return to the role, and the film franchise, that launched her into stardom at the age of 20.
At one point, she recalls making a conscious effort to leave the horror genre behind. Then the son of late producer Moustapha Akkad, who launched the Halloween films, convinced her in 2011 to attend an event to benefit a children’s charity called the sCare Foundation, dedicated to corralling horror fans, and stars, to fight poverty and homelessness among America’s youth.
She agreed and it made her realize she’d made the right decision, movie-wise, and that being scared could, indeed, be a good thing, with very positive vibes.
“People would come up with a hundred bucks and say, ‘I believe in what you’re doing. Thank you for those movies.’ It was crazy. It was fantastic.”
So even though she doesn’t love being scared, there is no doubt that her fans love Halloween—and love her. And to that, we say: All hail the Scream Queen.
Watch for Jamie Lee Curtis talking about the cultural significance of the Halloween franchise in the new AMC TV docuseries Eli Roth’s History of Horror (Oct. 14), and in theaters in the ensemble comedy Senior Entourage (Nov. 10) alongside Ed Asner, Helen Reddy and Marion Ross.