Jamie Lee Curtis: A Morning Person with a Legacy
Jamie Lee Curtis is a morning person. “It’s my nature,” she says cheerfully when we meet by Zoom in Los Angeles.
It’s a respectable 10am, but Jamie has already been up for several hours. “I was out late last night at an event honoring women in film, so I got very little sleep,” she admits. “But I was up and awake at about 3.30am or 4.00am this morning. I wake up this way every day – optimistic and energetic.” She pauses and, always the first to make fun of herself, laughs wryly. “By 4pm or 5pm, maybe I’m less optimistic and a little more tired – maybe a little more grouchy. But in the mornings I’m fine.”
She’s certainly looking great this bright Beverly Hills morning, poised and elegant in a sophisticated black suit, her striking white hair shining in a sleek bob, those narrow blue-green eyes crinkling into that recognizable satisfied grin. Her face is lined with laugh lines now: she’s not a young woman anymore and isn’t attempting to appear like one.
In fact, she turned 67 on November 22… “… and I love it!” she exclaims, happily. “I love ageing! Because ageing brings wisdom and ideas, and the best thing is that it’s not just the fragments of stimuli anymore, but the kind of completion of circles of ideas, which is so exciting, because the privilege of getting old – if you’re lucky enough to survive to get old – is that you get to complete a full life. These days, I am smarter, prettier, funnier, softer, louder, more opinionated, more political, more well-read than I was when I was 30. I wouldn’t want to be 30 again. I wouldn’t want to be 20 again. I wouldn’t want to be a day younger than I am, even though the pantyhose I’m wearing are cutting into my no-longer waistline. ‘Cause I’m a person without a waistline now. I won an Oscar but lost my waistline!’
If anyone has grounds to feel positive about her life, it’s Jamie Lee. At an age when female actors have customarily been sidelined, her career is soaring from triumph to triumph, with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once under her admittedly widening belt, a leading role in the new James Brooks movie Ella McCay, set for British release on December 12 – oh, and did she mention that the first recipient at that Women in Film event she attended last night was one Jamie Lee Curtis, receiving the Jane Fonda Humanitarian Award for artistic and philanthropic work, presented to her by Jane Fonda herself?
Why wouldn’t she be happy?
When asked about her enduring success in such a notoriously volatile industry, Jamie – who beneath the humor is sharp and perceptive – turns thoughtful.
“I was patient,” she states with conviction. “Whatever happened in my career, I kept suiting up and showing up and doing my thing. I’ve done some terrible work. I’ve done some really awful movies. But I’ve always shown up for them. I always talk to young people about putting themselves in the path of opportunity. You know, it’s like dating, right? You’re not going to meet somebody if you’re just sitting in your house. And in the same way, you’re not going to get a job just sitting waiting for somebody to give you a job. You have to put yourself in the path for it. So I’ve put myself in the path of these opportunities by continuing to do work even if it’s been sh*tty work. And once in a while something happens and you get lucky. And I’ve been very lucky.”
In numerous respects, she represents a piece of Hollywood heritage. Born to iconic actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, she was among the final generation of celebrated Hollywood actresses signed to Universal Studios. During her twenties, she became the definitive horror movie scream queen portraying Laurie Strode in the Halloween series, before transitioning to mainstream cinema in her thirties with films such as Trading Places and A Fish Called Wanda. A string of career peaks and valleys ensued – including a 2006 acting retirement announcement – until she made a triumphant comeback at 60, reprising her iconic role as Laurie Strode in the revived Halloween franchise.
Her subsequent work has kept her constantly in the spotlight through blockbusters like Knives Out and Everything Everywhere All At Once, plus a standout television performance as a hard-drinking family matriarch in the critically praised comedy The Bear. Following decades of dedicated work, she’s finally struck gold – a fact she readily acknowledges.
“It all came out of nowhere,” she admits. “I was a replacement part in Knives Out! Knives Out was a wonderful movie – but it was originally this little movie that suddenly became this big movie and I was in it! And then, with Everything Everywhere All At Once, no one could have had any expectation that that little movie about family relationships and the multiverse could or would have touched such a spark of energy and excitement as that one did. But you know, once in a while something happens. And it’s happened.”
This leads us to Ella McCay, the upcoming political comedy-drama helmed by legendary filmmaker James L. Brooks, whose celebrated works include Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets. The film stars British-French emerging talent Emma Mackey as a principled young local politician balancing career and personal life, alongside Woody Harrelson portraying her wayward father and Jamie as her straight-talking bar-owner aunt, Helen. Jamie Lee Curtis reveals that her latest role came unexpectedly.
“I get a letter from Jim [James L. Brooks] saying, ‘Hi Jamie Lee, I’ve worked on this script for 15 years. I would love you to play Helen. We shoot in the fall. I direct way better than I handwrite. Jim.'” This was a dream come true for Jamie, who had aspired to work with Brooks since watching the 1983 tear-jerker Terms of Endearment, a story about the complex relationship between a strong-willed woman, played by Shirley MacLaine, and her daughter, portrayed by Debra Winger.
“When I was a young actress …” Jamie starts, then pauses. “You know how there are actresses who always want the same parts, like – I’m guessing here, but I’m sure Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence, who are both actresses of the same age, have wanted the same part, but one got it and the other didn’t. Well, for me, when I was coming up, Debra Winger was the actress who got every part that I ever wanted.”
She believes she finally has that chance with her role as Aunt Helen in Ella McCay’s film. “She’s a worker,” she says, smiling affectionately, of the character. “She runs a bar. She runs a restaurant. She’s been bussing tables for a very long time, and there’s a physicality to that job – it isn’t an intellectual job, it’s sweat equity. She’s carried a lot of trays.
“The event I went to last night, with all the fancy people in the room, all the beautifully decked out crowd of people … the people there that my heart was attached to were the people working as caterers. They were carrying trays with 40 people’s dinners on them through a crowd of people yapping at each other over them, while they were trying to do their job. I’m always trying to make way for people – I’m like ‘Hey, everybody, move back, move back’. I really felt for them.”
It becomes apparent that Jamie Lee isn’t one to hold back when expressing her views. “Hmm.” She pauses to consider that observation. “I would love to tell you that I am a brazen truthteller who tells other people like it is. But I am also trying to learn in my old age that what I think about somebody else is none of my effing business.
“I once heard somebody say that if you offer a solution to somebody it’s a form of aggression, because what you’re really saying is ‘I have a better idea than yours’. There’s a saying that ‘whatever happens in my hula hoop is my business, and what happens outside my hula hoop is none of my business’. I think that’s true – so much so that one year a friend of mine gave me a hula hoop for my birthday!”
Married to writer and comedian Christopher Guest since 1984, she has two adult children, Annie and Ruby, and maintains that one of her core principles as a parent is allowing them to chart their own course. “As a parent you try to run interference, and help them if you can. But my real job as a mother is to make sure they survive the fragmented parts of all our lives so that they can emerge at the end with their own minds, their own ideas, their own passions.” She refuses to dwell on potential problems. “I once heard a saying that there are two kinds of people. One that wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Good morning, God’. And the other who wakes up and says, ‘Good God, morning!’ I choose to wake up and say, “Good morning, God.”” She adds with a laugh. “I love being me. Even with the tight pantyhose!”
