Jamie Lee Curtis

• 1. Introduction

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  Jamie Lee Curtis accepted a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 78th Venice International Film Festival in September 2021, and she did not sound like a person winding down. "I feel so alive, like I'm this 14-year-old person just beginning their life. That's how I wake up every day with that sort of joy and purpose. I'm just beginning my work." Lifetime awards usually punctuate an ending. Hers landed in the middle of a story that was still gathering speed. So how did an actress first labeled a scream queen end up honored as one of the screen's great all-rounders? What did her family give her, and what did it withhold? And why does her résumé hold roles, causes, and ventures that nobody would have predicted from her first film?

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• 2. Hollywood Inheritance

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  Jamie Lee Curtis was born on the 22nd of November 1958 in Santa Monica, California. Her parents were the actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and she was their youngest daughter.

  Mátészalka, Hungary, was the hometown of the emigrants who were her paternal grandparents, and her father was Jewish. Her mother was of Danish, German, and Scotch-Irish descent. Curtis has an older sister, the actress Kelly Curtis, and four half-siblings from her father's later marriages, among them the actress Allegra Curtis.

  In 1962 her parents divorced, and the distance that followed colors how she speaks about her father. She has said he was "not around" and "not interested in being a father." After he died, she learned that she and her siblings had all been cut out of his will. Her mother married the stockbroker Robert Brandt, who helped raise her.

  Curtis attended the elite Harvard-Westlake School and Beverly Hills High School in Los Angeles. She graduated in 1976 from Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut. Back in California that year, she enrolled to study law at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, her mother's alma mater. She left after one semester to pursue acting. Her mother's reputation was about to matter more than any degree.

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• 3. Scream Queen

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  Quincy, M.E. gave Curtis her television debut in 1977. She went on to guest star on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, Columbo, Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. She also played Nurse Lt. Barbara Duran in the short-lived comedy Operation Petticoat, which ran from 1977 to 1978. That series was based on a 1959 film starring her father. She sat on the panel for several episodes of the game show Match Game.

  John Carpenter's 1978 horror film Halloween was her film debut, in the role of Laurie Strode. The producer Debra Hill cast her on purpose. Janet Leigh had become known as a horror icon through her Oscar-nominated work in Psycho, and Hill wanted that lineage on screen. The film was a major success and was considered the highest-grossing independent film of its time.

  Three more horror films followed in 1980. The Fog opened in February, again directed by Carpenter and produced by Hill, to mixed reviews but strong box office. It has since won critical reappraisal and a cult following. Prom Night, a low-budget Canadian slasher released in July, earned Curtis a Genie Award nomination for Best Performance by a Foreign Actress. Reviews were negative, and it was seen as a disposable entry in a crowded genre. Terror Train opened in October to similar notices. Both performed moderately well at the box office.

  In the latter two films, Curtis again played the lead whose friends are murdered and who is practically the only protagonist left alive. The critic Roger Ebert disliked all three of her 1980 films. Even so, he compared her place in the current horror glut to that of Christopher Lee in the previous one and Boris Karloff in the 1930s.

  Roadgames, a thriller shot in Australia in 1981, paired her with Stacey Keach under the director Richard Franklin, a friend of Carpenter's. The American distributor AVCO Embassy Pictures asked for her to be imported, and the Sydney branch of Actors Equity contested it. The film bombed at the Australian box office. Franklin later regretted not enlarging her role, yet it gained a cult following and was championed by Quentin Tarantino. That same year she reprised Laurie Strode in Halloween II. She also played the doomed Playmate in the television film Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story and appeared in She's in the Army Now.

  In 1983, a director would give her a part that the casting people thought was a mistake.

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• 4. Comedy Turn

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  "The casting people all thought Landis was crazy, and he single-handedly changed the course of my life by giving me that part." So Curtis later said of John Landis and Trading Places in 1983. She had already worked with Landis on the documentary Coming Soon, but the studio objected because she was known for horror. As a kindhearted prostitute, she helped the film become a great critical and commercial success and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

  Perfect arrived in 1985, with John Travolta and Curtis as a workout instructor. The role gave her a reputation as a sex symbol, yet the film flopped with critics and audiences. It later found a cult following, and in a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, Quentin Tarantino called it "greatly underappreciated." That same year she played Annie Oakley in an episode of Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends, and in 1986 she starred opposite Bette Davis in the HBO film As Summers Die.

  A Fish Called Wanda, in 1988, achieved cult status and showed off her comic timing. It brought her a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role and a Golden Globe nomination. Television came next. Anything but Love, opposite Richard Lewis, ran for four seasons from 1989 through 1992 and was her first starring role on the small screen. As Hannah Miller she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy and the People's Choice Award for Favorite Actress in a New TV Series.

  Kathryn Bigelow directed her in the action thriller Blue Steel in 1990, and reviews of Curtis were positive. My Girl, in 1991, reunited her with her Trading Places co-star Dan Aykroyd. It was a great commercial success and led to a 1994 sequel. In 1992 she appeared with Mel Gibson in Forever Young.

  James Cameron's True Lies, in 1994, became the 3rd highest-grossing film of that year. It won Curtis a Golden Globe and her first Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Not every choice paid off. Fierce Creatures in 1997 reunited her with her Wanda costars John Cleese, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin. It grossed $40 million worldwide against a $25 million budget, and 53% of critics rated it positively on Rotten Tomatoes. In 1998 her television film Nicholas' Gift earned her a first Primetime Emmy nomination, and she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The science fiction horror film Virus, in 1999, was a critical and commercial flop, and she has said she regrets it.

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• 5. Pause And Return

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  In 2000 the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year award went to Curtis, who also appeared in the crime comedy Drowning Mona. The following year she played Geoffrey Rush's wife in The Tailor of Panama and appeared in Daddy and Them. She also voiced Queen Camilla in the animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys.

  Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California, became the set for Freaky Friday in 2003, near where Curtis and Christopher Guest lived with their children. Opposite Lindsay Lohan, she drew praise. A. O. Scott of The New York Times said she "does some of her best work ever," and Entertainment Weekly called her performance "glorious." It brought another Golden Globe nomination. The same year she received a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, for the audiobook The Jamie Lee Curtis Audio Collection.

  Christmas with the Kranks in 2004 was critically derided but a box office success. In 2005 she appeared as herself with her True Lies co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Kid & I and hosted the CBS program A Home for the Holidays. Then, in October 2006, she told Access Hollywood that she had closed the book on acting to focus on her family. Eight months later, in June 2007, she was cast in Disney's Beverly Hills Chihuahua opposite Piper Perabo.

  You Again, with Kristen Bell and Sigourney Weaver, opened the 2010s for her. In 2012 she appeared in five episodes of NCIS as Dr. Samantha Ryan, a potential romantic interest for Special Agent Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon. Harmon had played her character's fiancé and later husband in the 2003 Freaky Friday. From 2012 to 2018 she also had a recurring role on New Girl as Joan Day, the mother of Zooey Deschanel's character.

  Scream Queens, a Fox satirical horror comedy, ran for two seasons from 2015 to 2016, with Curtis as Cathy Munsch. In one first-season episode she filmed an intricate homage to her mother's shower scene in Psycho. The role earned her a Golden Globe nomination and a People's Choice nomination. In 2016 IndieWire named her one of the best actors never to receive an Academy Award nomination. A year later, Eminem mentioned her in Big Sean's song No Favors.

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• 6. Late Triumphs

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  Halloween opened in 2018 with $76.2 million, the highest opening weekend in the franchise's history and the second-best October opening ever. That weekend alone made it the biggest domestic grosser in the series. It was also the best-ever opening for a film led by an actress over 55. The same year, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times praised her work in An Acceptable Loss, saying she "creates a monster so terrifying she'd have Michael Myers turning tail and running away."

  Rian Johnson's Knives Out, in 2019, cast her as Linda Drysdale-Thrombrey, eldest daughter of the novelist Harlan Thrombey, played by Christopher Plummer. The film earned over $300 million worldwide. The American Film Institute, the National Board of Review, and Time magazine each placed it among the top ten films of 2019.

  Halloween Kills arrived in October 2021, and Halloween Ends followed in October 2022. The second marked the last time Curtis would play Laurie Strode. Each film earned her a People's Choice Award nomination for Drama Movie Star. On the 12th of October 2022, she was honored with a handprint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theater, where her close friends Melanie Griffith and Arnold Schwarzenegger gave speeches.

  Everything Everywhere All at Once, in 2022, gave her the role of Deirdre Beaubeirdre, a persnickety Internal Revenue Service inspector. It brought nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA, Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award, plus an Independent Spirit nomination. It was her first Oscar nomination. She won the Academy Award and the SAG Award, the first time she had won either, and shared in the cast's SAG win for Best Ensemble.

  Hulu's The Bear brought her Donna Berzatto, an alcoholic family matriarch, in the second season in 2023. She had hoped to join the series after watching its first season. The performance drew widespread critical acclaim and won her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards. On the 28th of July 2023, Disney's Haunted Mansion, in which she played Madame Leota, opened to mixed reviews.

  The Walt Disney Company named her a Disney Legend in 2024. Borderlands, released on the 9th of August 2024, cast her as Dr. Patricia Tannis. It drew negative reviews and bombed. Gia Coppola's The Last Showgirl premiered at TIFF on the 6th of September 2024 and earned her a fourth SAG nomination and a fourth BAFTA nomination.

  Freakier Friday reached theaters on the 8th of August 2025, with Curtis co-producing and returning as Tess Coleman alongside Lindsay Lohan. She also starred in James L. Brooks's Ella McCay that year and received a producer credit on Paul Greengrass's The Lost Bus.

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• 7. Beyond The Screen

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  Budapest's Great Synagogue, built in 1859, was damaged in World War II. Beginning in 1990, Curtis and her father took a renewed interest in their family's Hungarian Jewish heritage and helped finance its rebuilding. It is the largest synagogue in Europe. Curtis later helped refurbish the synagogue in Mátészalka where her grandparents worshipped and attended the opening of the Tony Curtis Memorial Museum and Cafe there.

  In 2003 she was guest of honor at the 11th annual gala for Women in Recovery, a Venice, California nonprofit offering a live-in, twelve-step program for women. She hosts the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation's Dream Halloween event in Los Angeles every October. She also holds a leadership role at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and supported the opening of a new inpatient facility in 2011. During the COVID-19 pandemic she started My Hand in Yours, which carries the message "you are not alone." All proceeds from its store go toward the care of critically ill and injured children.

  In March 2012 Curtis joined Martin Sheen and Brad Pitt in a staged reading of Dustin Lance Black's play 8, a reenactment of the trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage. She played Sandy Stier at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, and the performance was broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. In October 2023 The Advocate named her Advocate of the Year as part of its Out100 celebration. As the mother of a transgender daughter, she used her speech to condemn anti-LGBTQ+ lawmakers and said, "Freedom is the goal." In January 2025 she donated $1 million to Los Angeles wildfire relief. That year she also fronted a campaign against the pressure of cosmetic surgery and Hollywood standards on young women, wearing red plastic lips in caricature, and discussed it with The Guardian.

  Laura Cornell is the illustrator behind Curtis's many children's books, all published by HarperCollins Children's Books and several of them New York Times best-sellers. From 2011 to 2017 Curtis blogged for The Huffington Post. In February 2022 she was announced as co-writer of the graphic novel Mother Nature, drawn from an eco-horror film she planned to write and direct with Comet Pictures and Blumhouse Productions. Titan Comics published it in July 2023, written with the filmmaker Russell Goldman and illustrated by Karl Stevens.

  Patent No. 4,753,647 comes from an application Curtis filed in 1987. It describes a diaper with a moisture-proof pocket holding wipes that can be pulled out and used with one hand. She refused to let it be marketed until companies began selling biodegradable diapers. Its full term ended on the 20th of February 2007, and it is now in the public domain. A second diaper application, filed in 2016, issued as US Patent 9,827,151 on the 28th of November 2017 and will expire on the 7th of September 2036.

  On her website, Curtis tells young readers she "moonlights as an actor, photographer, and closet organizer." She launched the podcast Letters from Camp on Audible in 2020 and Good Friend with Jamie Lee Curtis for iHeartRadio in 2021.

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• 8. Private Life

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  Robert Carradine, whom she met during a taping of The Dinah Shore Show, was her dating partner in the 1970s, and she calls him her "first crush." She also briefly dated the British rock singer Adam Ant. In Rolling Stone she saw a picture of the actor and director Christopher Guest in This Is Spinal Tap, which came out in 1984. She told her friend Debra Hill, "Oh, I'm going to marry that guy." She married him on the 18th of December 1984, five months after that remark. They have two adopted daughters, and she is the godmother of the actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

  On the 8th of April 1996, Guest inherited the title Baron Haden-Guest when his father died. As the wife of a hereditary peer, Curtis is a baroness, styled The Right Honourable The Lady Haden-Guest. She does not use the title and has said, "it has nothing to do with me."

  Sigourney Weaver is among her close friends. In a 2015 interview, Curtis said she has never watched Weaver's film Alien, from 1979, all the way through because it frightened her too much.

  Curtis is a recovering alcoholic. She was once addicted to painkillers, which she began using after a cosmetic surgical procedure. In 1999 she became sober from opiates after reading and relating to Tom Chiarella's account of addiction. She has called her recovery the greatest achievement of her life.

  World of Warcraft and the manga One Piece are two of her enthusiasms. She has worn disguises that let her attend Comic-Con, EVO, and BlizzCon incognito. In December 2025 her older daughter Annie gave birth to a son, the first grandchild for Curtis and Guest.

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