There are two themes that emerge because the magnetic Jamie Lee Curtis gives a profession retrospective dialog. One, Curtis has continuously confirmed her doubters (be it different actors, administrators or studio execs) incorrect. And two, every main success the actress had early on in her profession led on to her subsequent huge rating.
Curtis was not director John Carpenter’s first option to play lead Laurie Strode in 1978’s Halloween, the seminal indie horror flick that launched knife-wielding slasher Michael Myers to the pantheon of iconic display screen slayers and reworked the style. Even after that movie — for which Curtis was solely paid $8,000 — grew to become a sensation, the actress may hardly get any work. So Carpenter, now satisfied of Curtis’s command of the craft, wrote her a task in The Fog (1980), a movie that additionally memorably co-starred Curtis’s well-known mom, Psycho star Janet Leigh. After roles in 1980’s Prom Night and Terror Train, Curtis was determined to interrupt away from the scream-queen fare when she took a job narrating the John Landis-directed documentary on the style referred to as Coming Soon.
Landis was so taken by Curtis’s humorousness on set, he solid her within the 1983 comedy favourite Trading Places regardless of Paramount not wanting her. John Cleese was so amused by her efficiency alongside Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy in Trading Places that he wrote the position of Wanda Gershwitz particularly for Curtis within the 1988 razor-sharp laugher A Fish Called Wanda. And James Cameron was so enamored together with her position in Wanda that he enlisted her for the 1994 motion hit True Lies, over the preliminary protests of main man Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The ever-candid 62-year-old actress talked about all these movies and extra in our newest episode of Role Recall (watch above) as her newest movie, Halloween Kills, hits theaters. The sequel marks Curtis’s sixth spin because the Michael Myers-evading horror heroine. But what makes this one completely different? “Violence,” Curtis laughs. “It’s a sign o’ the times. This is an escalation in Michael’s transcendence.”
Some highlights from our transcendent Role Recall interview with Curtis:
On why she wasn’t afraid of Michael Myers on the set of Halloween (1978): A participant on the tv present Operation Petticoat on the time, the 19-year-old Curtis made her movie debut in John Carpenter’s gnarly future horror traditional. But there was nothing scary to her in regards to the man in a masks chasing her across the set.
“Here’s the problem: He’s played by Nick Castle, who was one of John’s best friends. He had two little kids. His wife was around,” Curtis explains. “And he’s this funny guy. And he’s also a very talented director and he’s a musician. So I cannot lie to you and tell you I was so frightened.” (Watch our interview with Castle right here.)
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On why Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t need her to play his spouse in True Lies: Curtis has referred to as James Cameron’s 1994 blockbuster her all-time favourite filming expertise, which included her well-known striptease (enjoyable truth: a YouTube add of the scene comes with a local weather change warning) and some stunt work as she dangles from a helicopter. But her well-known co-star didn’t initially love the concept of her taking part in spouse to his spy drawn into some high-stakes motion.
“Arnold knew me as Tony’s daughter,” she mentioned, referencing the one movie Schwarzenegger ever directed, the 1992 TV film Christmas in Connecticut, which starred her father, Tony Curtis, and Dyan Cannon. “He only knew me as Tony’s daughter. He loved Tony Curtis. So I’m sure Arnold just looked at me like it’d be like kissing your niece or something … I guarantee, in fact, he did not want me to be in that movie. I think he just thought it would be weird. We knew each other a little bit socially. I just don’t think he thought of me as his leading lady. I think he thought of me as Tony’s little girl. And it was Jim who said, ‘No, I’ve written this for her. She’s the one to do this with you.’”
Curtis says Schwarzenegger ultimately made up for his resistance to her casting with “the greatest gift.” He supported her title going (alongside together with his) earlier than the title within the movie’s opening credit.
On the key code she makes use of (or a minimum of used) to ensure it’s really Lindsay Lohan texting her: Curtis loved working with Lohan on the 2003 body-swapping comedy Freaky Friday, a project on which Curtis replaced Annette Bening at the 11th hour. The pair are still in touch, and to prove it, Curtis shared how she tests would-be phishers who text claiming to be Lohan, which is something that apparently happens.
“There’s a song called ‘Like I Love You‘ by Justin Timberlake,” she says. “And Lindsay and I were doing a scene in a car and there was a lot of time in between takes. And there’s a rap in the middle of that song by Clipse. She and I were trying to learn the words. And we were like sitting there with a pad. … We were writing them down and then we would do the scene and then we’d play the song and try to lip-sync the few words that we knew. I’m telling you, we laughed. And that is my secret code with her. ‘What was the song we were lip-syncing to in the car?’
“Now I’ve given it away. But I have another one.”
Halloween Kills is now in theaters and streaming on Peacock.
— Video produced by Jon Santo and edited by Anne Lilburn
Watch the Halloween Kills trailer: