NEED TO KNOW
Jamie Lee Curtis wants to leave Hollywood on her own terms.
The Oscar winner, 66, who is the daughter of actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, made her big-screen debut at age 19. Since then, she’s worked steadily in the industry. However, it turns out she’s spent decades thinking about how it will all end.
Speaking to The Guardian, she explained how her parents’ careers influenced her approach to the industry and retirement.
“I witnessed my parents lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their life and their livelihood, when the industry rejected them at a certain age. I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that’s very painful,” she said.
The actress, who next appears alongside Lindsay Lohan in Freakier Friday, does not want to experience something similar and said she has been “self-retiring for 30 years.”
“I have been prepping to get out, so that I don’t have to suffer the same as my family did. I want to leave the party before I’m no longer invited,” she said.
Jamie Lee might have retirement on the back of her mind, but she’s firmly living in the moment. With a slate of exciting projects in the works, she is feeling in control and like “a boss.”
That means she’s come into owning her power in the industry, sometimes even being “quite brisk.”
“And I have no problem saying: ‘Back the f— off,’ ” she added.
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Recent projects have also given Curtis the agency to cover more creative ground and showcase her various talents.
When asked about her role on The Bear, where she plays an alcoholic, the star said it was anything by traumatizing for her to get the opportunity.
“Here’s what’s traumatic: not being able to express your range as an artist. That’s traumatic. To spend your entire public life holding back range. And depth. And complexity. And contradiction. And rage. And pain. And sorrow,” she said. “And to have been limited to a much smaller palette of creative, emotional work.”
“For me, it was an unleashing of 50 years of being a performer who was never considered to have any range. And so the freedom, and the confidence, that I was given by Chris [Storer, The Bear’s creator], and the writing, which leads you … everywhere you need to go — it was exhilarating. It took no toll. The toll has been 40 years of holding back something I know is here.”
Freakier Friday is in theaters Aug. 8.
