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Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Akroyd in 1983\u2019s \u2018Trading Places\u2019 \u00a9 Credit: Collection Christophel\/Alamy<\/p>\nJamie Lee Curtis bursts into the room in a blaze of volcanic red, her three-piece velvet suit matched by her explosive energy. After a profuse apology for being late (she isn\u2019t) comes more colour: \u201cI wrap my Christmas gifts in old Financial Times and recycled ribbon.\u201d It was Martha Stewart who turned her on to the pink paper, advising \u201cit makes for a prettier presentation\u201d.<\/p>\n
And Curtis believes newspapers have a future beyond gift-wrapping. \u201cI feel like we are leaning towards an analogue future. We are getting detached and that detachment is creating a weird isolation. And people are craving contact and connection which is analogue. You cannot have contact in a digital world\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009we\u2019re missing the crucial thing that keeps us human.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a view in keeping with the warmly nostalgic film she is in London (Claridge\u2019s to be precise) to promote. Ella McCay is a Disney comedy-drama set in 2008, a time when \u201cwe all still liked each other\u201d (as narrator Julie Kavner, the voice of Marge Simpson, tells us in her comfortingly familiar rasp).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the key phrase in the movie,\u201d Curtis says of the script penned by celebrated director James L Brooks (Terms of Endearment, As Good as it Gets). \u201cJim has said publicly you couldn\u2019t have set this movie today because we\u2019re so divided. The political divide is so vastly hostile. That was a time when you could have differences, but you could still reach across the aisle to find common ground.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Emma Mackey stars as her near-namesake Ella, a young politician who finds herself thrust simultaneously into the role of state governor and the swirl of a sex scandal (albeit a quaintly tame one). Curtis plays her unfiltered aunt Helen, who doubles as Ella\u2019s confidante.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The film comes alive every time Curtis is on screen, a feature of all her work since her Oscar-winning turn as a fastidious IRS auditor in 2022\u2019s Everything Everywhere All at Once, from streaming sensation The Bear to low-budget indie hit The Last Showgirl, even the belated sequel Freakier Friday. Like the protagonist she plays in that body-swap comedy, Curtis at 67 seems possessed by an irrepressible youthful vigour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019m 14 today,\u201d she declares. \u201cI\u2019m jet-lagged and I\u2019m like this. I\u2019ve been up since 5am. I\u2019m getting on a plane in an hour. This has been my gift, that I have joy of life.\u201d An active TikToker, she marked her recent birthday by doing the 6-7 dance meme.<\/p>\n
Now that this career hot streak has arrived, she is determined to bask in it for as long as it lasts. \u201cI\u2019ve been an actor since I was 19. I\u2019ve waited my entire career for a filmmaker like James L Brooks to ask me to play a part.\u201d<\/p>\n
But how could it come as any surprise that she landed a role that seems made for her? She arches an eyebrow. \u201cWell\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009you don\u2019t know me. The truth is, my husband is very quiet [filmmaker Christopher Guest, better known for going \u201cone louder\u201d in This Is Spinal Tap]. I\u2019m very quiet. I\u2019m very solitary. I\u2019m actually shy. I could walk into a room of a million people right now and speak to them, but I\u2019m actually shy\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009There are aspects of Helen that are not mine. I speak my mind but I\u2019m not a blurter.\u201d<\/p>\n
What they do have in common is screaming. A standout scene in Ella McCay finds Helen and her niece indulging in a cathartic bout of primal yelling that took Curtis back to her early career as a scream queen. For many movie-lovers, she will forever be frozen in time as teenager Laurie Strode in 1978\u2019s Halloween, a character, ironically, old beyond her years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Halloween was the only serious acting I ever did,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause there are three girls in it. There\u2019s a promiscuous cheerleader. I was a cheerleader in high school\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009\u201d. Comic pause. \u201cMaybe I was promiscuous. Then there\u2019s the smart alec, snarky, wry, quick witted, slightly grumpy girl.\u201d She points to herself. \u201cPerfect for it, quick to snark. And then there\u2019s Laurie, the intellectual, deep, virginal dreamer. And somehow John Carpenter cast me as her. He didn\u2019t know me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For a while Curtis continued punishing her vocal cords in a string of slashers that included Halloween sequels, trapped by the genre that had launched her career. It was the 1983 comedy Trading Places that freed her, the role of a smart-mouthed, provocatively dressed (and undressed) sex worker helping her shed any lingering goody-two-shoes image. I tell her it was the first film I saw her in. \u201cThen you saw a lot of me,\u201d she smirks. I was 10 years old. \u201cYeah, well if those were the first you ever saw, God bless you. And thank my mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Akroyd in 1983\u2019s \u2018Trading Places\u2019 \u00a9 Credit: Collection Christophel\/Alamy<\/p>\n
Mom of course was Janet Leigh; dad was Tony Curtis. When Jamie was born, dad had just finished shooting Some Like It Hot; when she was one, mom stepped into the shower for Psycho. But when I ask Curtis about growing up in a Hollywood family, she pushes back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really, because my parents divorced when I was very young. My mother married a businessman and I was raised on a dirt road in a canyon where I was barefoot most of the time and rode bikes. I was not raised around any bit of show business.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 1980s and \u201990s were a fruitful period with career highlights such as A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies. But there were lean years. \u201cI\u2019m married to a director, a lot of our friends are in show business. I\u2019ve never worked for one of them. So you have to metabolise that not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to think you have talent\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009It\u2019s a weird job.\u201d She adds: \u201cYou watch a lot of other people get a lot of opportunities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Would she care to name names? \u201cI will tell you who got every single part I ever wanted. When you go into an audition, you check in and everybody\u2019s name\u2019s there. I became very good at reading upside down. And you\u2019re like, ugh, Debra Winger.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As Wanda Gershwitz, the con artist pulling the strings in 1988\u2019s \u2018A Fish Called Wanda\u2019 with John Cleese and Kevin Kline in \u00a9 Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy <\/p>\n
A fallow period followed 2003\u2019s Freaky Friday but something changed in 2018. \u201cI turned 60 and I woke up and realised: holy shit, I\u2019m going to die sooner than later \u2014 way sooner than later\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Tick effing tock, Jamie. Go!\u201d<\/p>\n
In an unexpected twist, it was a return to Halloween (the 2018 reboot) that kick-started the new chapter of her career. When it became apparent that horror maestro Jason Blum wanted her for a trilogy, Curtis parlayed her commitment into a \u201clittle production deal\u201d. Within a year she brought him California wildfires thriller The Lost Bus (which this year became a well-received Apple movie) and the works of crime writer Patricia Cornwell (a friend).<\/p>\n
Then came a lucky break: running into Nicole Kidman at the 2022 Oscars, \u201ca woman I\u2019d never met\u201d. It turned out Kidman was a fan of both Curtis and Cornwell and had always wanted to play forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. And so the upcoming Amazon series Scarpetta was born, with Curtis playing Kay\u2019s older sister, Dorothy.<\/p>\n
A year later, Curtis had an even better night at the Oscars as the multiverse-hopping Everything Everywhere All at Once swept the boards. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand it. I still don\u2019t, really\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009We finished the movie the day Covid shut the world down. Then, two years later, the movie\u2019s released. And a year later it wins a handful of Oscars, including Best Picture.\u201d And Best Supporting Actress, I add. \u201cSomething that never, ever was going to happen in my life,\u201d Curtis says. Something neither of her parents achieved.<\/p>\n
The Oscar opened new doors. Today it occupies pride of place in her home, though with some modifications. \u201cMy Oscar has a googly eye attached to its head and there\u2019s a little pin that rests on the base that says \u2018they\/them\u2019 because it\u2019s a genderless statue and in honour of my trans daughter, Ruby.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enter The Bear, pursuing an actor. Watching the first season in 2022, Curtis had a premonition. \u201cThere\u2019s a moment where Carmen\u2019s sister shows up and says, \u2018Have you called mom? You should call her.\u201d And I said to myself, \u2018I\u2019m going to play her.\u2019\u201d Months later, the phone rang. \u201cMy agent said, \u2018You\u2019ve been offered a part on The Bear.\u2019 And I said, \u2018The mother? Yeah, I knew that would happen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Curtis was hailed by critics and won an Emmy for her performance as boozy, overbearing matriarch Donna Berzatto in arguably the show\u2019s best episode to date. This, Curtis says, was the real catalyst for her new lease of creative life. \u201cThat show unleashed me. There was no rehearsal, and I had never met any of these people prior to walking into that kitchen, and within an hour we were shooting. It was jumping out of an airplane for me creatively, emotionally, and it did give me confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curtis has been an outspoken advocate for women and against cosmetic surgery and the \u201cdisfigurement of generations\u201d. Are there more roles available to women of a certain age these days? \u201cThere\u2019s been a shift. Not a giant shift, but a shift. Kathy Bates is having a good time. Jean Smart, Demi Moore, Emma Thompson, Sigourney Weaver all have shows. Television is welcoming women past a certain age. The movie business a little less so\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I am a lucky beneficiary. I\u2019m going to do Murder, She Wrote next year. I am Jessica Fletcher.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
With recognition has come acceptance. \u201cI\u2019m sure there are plenty of people who think I\u2019m terrific, and I\u2019m sure there are plenty of people who think I\u2019m a piece of shit.\u201d You get the feeling she really couldn\u2019t give a damn either way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t get enough right now. I\u2019m having just the best time,\u201d she beams. \u201cAnd I take none of it seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Ella McCay\u2019 is in cinemas now<\/p>\n
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