{"id":257016,"date":"2025-10-28T17:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/257016\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T17:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:38:07","slug":"jamie-lee-curtis-on-47-year-acting-legacy-and-charlie-kirk-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/257016\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Lee Curtis on 47-Year Acting Legacy and Charlie Kirk Backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a> was shooting \u201cFierce Creatures\u201d in London in 1996, Princess Diana came by the set with her two little princes.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt had been a long day, and Curtis was on a much-needed pee break when the royal family arrived. Unfortunately, by the time she made the mile-long journey back from the bathroom in her golf cart, Diana and the boys were gone. So Curtis wrote the princess a letter, which she left at Kensington Palace, saying how sorry she was not to have met her, and how much she admired her. Curtis explained about the long day and the bathroom break and the golf cart.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDiana wrote back,\u201d Curtis says today from her porch overlooking a lush Santa Monica canyon. \u201cShe was like, \u2018Totally get it: Been there, done that. I admire you too. It\u2019d be nice to meet you someday.\u201d Curtis barely pauses and says, \u201cShe died a year later.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSami Drasin for Variety Magazine<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is banana bread that Curtis made \u201cin the dark\u201d early that morning and small, foamy cups of strong cappuccino. There is a little white dog, Runi, whom Curtis talks to in a high-pitched voice. Later, she\u2019ll sign 15 children\u2019s books she\u2019s written over the years and put them in a tote for my 3-month-old grandson. Curtis is, I would say, proudly domestic and aggressively generous, sometimes in a hoovering mother kind of way. (On my way out, she\u2019ll ask, \u201cDo you need to pee or poop before you go?\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe day that Princess Diana died, Curtis sat on her bed in this same house, where she lives with her husband of 41 years, Christopher Guest, and instead of watching, on a loop, the televised images of the tunnel where Diana was killed, she turned off the TV and picked up a book by Insight Meditation guru Jack Kornfield that a friend had given her. \u201cThe opening pages say that anyone who has tried to live mindfully at the time of their death asks themselves two questions: Did I learn to live wisely? Did I love well? And I remember sitting there and thinking about Diana\u2019s life, and about her getting out of this bullshit marriage; her bravery at the beginning of the AIDS crisis when she reached out to a man with AIDS and put her hand on his leg; her walking through those minefields. Just her beautiful humanness. And I thought, \u2018She learned to live wisely. And yeah, she loved well.\u2019 That has stayed with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis is thinking about the spectacle of Diana\u2019s death, because yesterday she was on Marc Maron\u2019s \u201cWTF\u201d podcast talking about her new movie, \u201cFreakier Friday,\u201d and plugging \u201cThe Lost Bus,\u201d which she produced with Jason Blum, when she and Maron got onto the subject of Charlie Kirk, the Christian nationalist who\u2019d been assassinated a few days before. Probably because she has been a longtime advocate for LGBTQ rights (her daughter Ruby is trans), no one expected Curtis to cry about the death of a man who said, \u201cThe transgender thing happening in America now is a throbbing middle finger to God.\u201d And not everyone understood how she could say she hoped his god had been with him at the moment of his passing.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo the backlash over the interview was fierce, relentless and \u201cthreatening.\u201d \u201cAn excerpt of it mistranslated what I was saying as I wished him well \u2014 like I was talking about him in a very positive way, which I wasn\u2019t; I was simply talking about his faith in God. And so it was a mistranslation, which is a pun, but not. In the binary world today, you cannot hold two ideas at the same time: I cannot be Jewish and totally believe in Israel\u2019s right to exist and at the same time reject the destruction of Gaza. You can\u2019t say that, because you get vilified for having a mind that says, \u2018I can hold both those thoughts. I can be contradictory in that way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeing a public figure, she must have to be careful, I say, and she sits up straight and glares at me.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t have to be careful,\u201d she says sharply. \u201cIf I was careful, I wouldn\u2019t have told you any of what I just told you. I would have just said, \u2018Hi, welcome. I baked you banana bread. Here\u2019s my dog. Here\u2019s my house, blah, blah, blah. What do you want to know?\u2019 I can\u2019t not be who I am in the moment I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt takes an iconic royal to know an iconic royal. At 66, Curtis downplays her childhood with her famous parents, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, saying that she had a \u201ccomfortable, not fancy\u201d L.A. life with her mother and Marine stepfather after her father \u201cabandoned\u201d the family for a 17-year-old. She says: \u201cShow business wasn\u2019t evident to me as a child. I mean, there are a couple pictures of me on sets with my sister, but I don\u2019t have a memory of any of it \u2014 any of it, just none of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the fact is, whatever powerful juju ran through her parents\u2019 veins was passed on to their daughter, so much so that she\u2019s been a part of the American consciousness since she was 19, when she headlined \u201cHalloween,\u201d the template-setting slasher film. Furthermore, she\u2019s remained that famous for the next 47 years and counting, winning an Oscar and an Emmy late in her career.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut back when she was a kid, she thought of herself as someone with \u201cno tangible abilities: I was a D+ student \u2014 C- if you graded on a curve. I was a cheerleader.\u201d She\u2019s holding a bit of banana bread between her fingers as Guest pads around the kitchen in bare feet behind her. \u201cI was kind of a weirdo. I was\u201d \u2014 she points to herself \u2014 \u201cthis girl at 16, full of energy and personality. But I had no intelligence. You know, I wasn\u2019t an athlete, I wasn\u2019t in the plays. And I became an actor by accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis credits a series of strong women with helping her evolve from an \u201cincurious\u201d child to a person with a formidable mind and an uncanny ability to raise money.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe starts with her mother \u2014 most famous for her part in \u201cPsycho\u201d\u2014 who, when Curtis was a little girl, joined a group called Share, started in the 1950s by the wives of Hollywood stars to raise money for children\u2019s causes in L.A. Part of Share was an annual star-studded show called the Boomtown Party. Curtis watched rehearsals at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium every year, and it stuck with her, seeing her mother don a cowboy outfit and dance with Steve McQueen\u2019s wife, Neile Adams McQueen; and Altovise Davis, who was married to Sammy Davis Jr., all to support kids less fortunate than herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tBeing friends with Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Curtis\u2019 mother was also involved with the Special Olympics at UCLA, which Shriver started in 1968. \u201cThis was the beginning of the Special Olympics at UCLA,\u201d Curtis says, \u201cand celebrities would come to walk the opening ceremonies. Curtis and her mother went every year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI raised my hand when I was 15,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat if we call Polaroid and get them to donate cameras? I\u2019ll set up a booth, and then we can take Polaroids of the athletes with a celebrity and give them the Polaroid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShriver liked the idea, and Curtis ran the booth for years. \u201cFour years into it, when I was 19, Eunice called me and said, \u2018We\u2019d like you to be in the pictures this year, because you were on TV.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAbout that television appearance.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen she was home for Christmas break after her first semester at college, Curtis visited a friend in Beverly Hills. The friend had a tennis court where her family took lessons from a guy named Chuck Binder. He called out to her from the court, \u201cHey, Jamie!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI knew him for years,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it was like, \u2018Hey, Chuck.\u2019 And he was like, \u2018They\u2019re looking for Nancy Drew at Universal. I\u2019m managing actors now.\u2019\u201d Curtis interrupts herself to say, \u201cShow business, right? You\u2019re a tennis teacher; now you\u2019re managing actors.\u201d Then she continues her story: \u201cHe goes, \u2018You should go up for it; you\u2019d be good.\u2019 I was like, \u2018OK.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis auditioned for \u201cNancy Drew\u201d and didn\u2019t get the part, but it gave her an idea: What if she did a monthlong independent project where she\u2019d try to break into show business and write a paper about it? She called someone at the school, and they agreed.<\/p>\n

\n\tA few days before she was scheduled to go back to college, Binder sent her to audition for Monique James, who was the VP of new talent at Universal Studios. (\u201cWomen get shit done,\u201d Curtis says of James.) Curtis brought in a kid from acting class, and they did a scene, and when they were done, Curtis turned to James and said (she does this like she\u2019s a gum-chewing airhead): \u201cHey, listen, this was fun. Thank you so much. I loooved it. Listen, honestly, here\u2019s what the problem is: I\u2019m going back to college in two days, so I need to know if this is going to happen.\u201d She drops the airhead shtick. \u201cThey called me the next day, and they offered me a contract. I dropped out of college and became an actor, bringing in $235 a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis moved into a stucco-ceilinged one-bedroom apartment on Mary Ellen Avenue in the Valley, furnishing it with the wicker bedroom set from her childhood and a Naugahyde couch. She got bit parts on \u201cQuincy, M.E.,\u201d \u201cThe Hardy Boys\u201d and \u201cColumbo,\u201d and then she snagged a role on both the film remake and the TV show \u201cOperation Petticoat,\u201d about Army nurses who get stuck on a Navy submarine.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen James invited her to lunch and told her she was fired; ABC was revamping the show, and she was one of 11 actors to be let go. Curtis drove home to her \u201cshitty little apartment, thinking, \u2018Oh, fuck, I\u2019m gonna have to move home. I\u2019m gonna have to go back to college!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA week or so after that, Binder called. \u201cThey\u2019re casting this low-budget horror film out of an office on Cahuenga,\u201d he said. \u201cThe director is up-and-coming.\u201d That director was John Carpenter, and the film was \u201cHalloween.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf I hadn\u2019t gotten fired,\u201d Curtis says, \u201cI would have never auditioned for \u2018Halloween,\u2019 which then became something important, right? And then the rest of my life happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019ve all watched her films over the decades: Maybe we saw the early run of horror films that made Curtis the ultimate final girl and gave her the title of \u201cscream queen.\u201d Many of us have seen \u201cTrading Places,\u201d \u201cA Fish Called Wanda,\u201d \u201cMy Girl,\u201d \u201cTrue Lies,\u201d \u201cFreaky Friday,\u201d \u201cKnives Out,\u201d her return to \u201cHalloween\u201d and \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once,\u201d for which she won a supporting actress Academy Award. Her nearly five-decade-long path to Oscar winner has been a part of our cultural identity: She is such a force that she replaced then-all-American hero O.J. Simpson as the person running through airports jumping over things for Hertz.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, in 2023, she stunned us with her deep, raw, Emmy-winning performance as Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic Italian matriarch of an irrevocably damaged family on \u201cThe Bear.\u201d She had never met anyone in the cast when she came to shoot the episode called \u201cFishes,\u201d where she\u2019s drinking and smoking and terrifying her people while cooking a doomed Christmas dinner.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJamie came in swinging,\u201d says Christopher Storer, the creator of \u201cThe Bear.\u201d \u201cNormally, we\u2019re not the type of show that tries to get famous people \u2014 it\u2019s always friends of ours. And Jamie was the only one that was outside of that, because we knew we needed danger \u2014 we needed a wild card that the cast wasn\u2019t familiar with. And the first time really anyone met her, she was Donna. Our call time was at 7, and at 7:02 we were shooting in the kitchen, and she was putting butter in her hands, wiping it across baguettes. She\u2019s an animal. She\u2019s a fucking animal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd she\u2019s not slowing down. \u201cFreakier Friday\u201d came out in theaters in August, and \u201cThe Lost Bus\u201d was released in September. Her next film, \u201cElla McCay,\u201d a political comedy-drama written and directed by James L. Brooks and starring Emma Mackey, is coming to theaters on Dec. 12.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Curtis is not just ferocious on set; interpersonally, she\u2019s also what Storer calls \u201ca tiger.\u201d In 1984, for instance, when she saw a photo of Guest in a magazine, she turned to her friend, the late \u201cHalloween\u201d producer Debra Hill, and said, \u201cI\u2019m going to marry him.\u201d Curtis thought he was \u201ccute.\u201d Hill said, \u201cOh, yeah, I tried to put him in a movie once \u2014 his name is Chris Guest. He\u2019s with your agents.\u201d The next day, Curtis called her agent and asked him to pass her number on. The agent did, but Guest never called.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, a couple months later, Curtis was having dinner with Melanie Griffith and her and her then-husband Steven Bauer at Hugo\u2019s in West Hollywood, and Guest was there, two tables away, facing Curtis. \u201cHe kind of looked at me, and he was like,\u201d she does a shy little wave, \u201clike, \u2018Hi. You called me.\u2019 And I made the gesture of \u2014\u201d she does the shy wave back, \u201cLike, \u2018I\u2019m the asshole who left my number with our agent.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFive minutes later, Curtis says, Guest got up to leave. \u201cAnd he stood at his table,\u201d Curtis says, \u201c10 feet, 15 feet away, and he sort of went,\u201d Curtis shrugs her shoulders, \u201cand I went\u2014\u201d she shrugs again. \u201cAnd he left. He didn\u2019t come over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGuest called Curtis the next day, and five-and-a-half months later they were married. She was 25 years old.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Curtis\u2019 grounding in philanthropy remains key to her identity. In 1984, while she was shooting \u201cGrandview, U.S.A.\u201d in Pontiac, Illinois, the town put on a benefit for Lori Tull, the first successful teen heart transplant patient. The cast and crew joined the event, and Curtis sold kisses at a fair and befriended Tull. They stayed in touch, including when Tull had her second transplant at Children\u2019s Hospital of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

\n\tAround this time, Curtis had a friend who was dying of AIDS at Midway Hospital in L.A. He had a VCR in his room, and when Curtis visited, they\u2019d watch movies. \u201cI remember him saying, \u2018Let\u2019s watch \u201cCasablanca,\u201d\u2019\u201d she says. So when Tull died, at 20, Curtis knew how she could honor her: She went to all the studios and asked for their backlog of videotapes. \u201cI put videotape machines in the rooms at Children\u2019s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Lori\u2019s name, and then had a rotating library of videotapes put in, because I understood the power of distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis went back to Children\u2019s Hospital to fundraise every year after that, and the hospital eventually created a chair in pediatric transplantation in her name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTalk about waking up feeling gratitude and grateful for a life,\u201d Curtis says, her plate of banana bread now only crumbs, her coffee cup empty. \u201cHow the fuck did I end up here?\u201d she says, gesturing to the green treetops and flawless blue sky before her. \u201cI was in a one-bedroom stucco apartment on Mary Ellen Avenue, and now I\u2019m all of a sudden here with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHave you lived your life wisely? I ask.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure,\u201d she says, nodding vigorously. \u201cOh, my God, for sure!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHave you loved well?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWay well,\u201d she says. \u201cWay well.\u201d She adds, \u201cBut I still recognize how difficult life is for most people. I think, ultimately, the root of philanthropy \u2014 and the root of humanity \u2014 is the relationship between your understanding of the reality and then your reality. How do you reconcile the two? That\u2019s service.\u201d<\/p>\n

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