Jamie Lee Curtis can’t stand horror movies. She’s been telling people that ever since she shivered the timbers of audiences the world over with her first starring role in the slasher classic, “Halloween.”
Curtis didn’t actually watch that movie, or the new “Halloween: H20,” which revives her character 20 years later.
“I hate horror films,” squeals Curtis. “I’ve been saying this for 20 years and nobody ever takes me seriously. I can’t see horror movies ever. I hate them. . . . I don’t like being frightened. I don’t like to have that scary music and knowing something scary’s going to jump out.”
She can watch the parts she’s in, she says, because she already knows what’s coming. She just fast forwards through the moments when the other actors are menaced by things that go bump in the night.
Having said all that, Curtis was a “silent” executive producer on “Halloween: H20,” tirelessly pushing to get it made. And she still credits the first film for all the roles that have followed.
“I look at everything as connected to `Halloween,’ ” she says. “John Landis, who directed `Trading Places,’ saw me in something that had to do with horror movies. Then John Cleese (who conscripted her for “A Fish Called Wanda”) saw me in `Trading Places’ and Jim Cameron (“True Lies”) saw me in `A Fish Called Wanda.’ But I can still trace it all back to horror movies.”
Though she is the daughter of ’50s stars Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, when she started out she was just a college student with little on her mind but partying.
“I was studying beer and more beer, maybe a little criminal law, maybe a little bit of drama — a lot of beer, pot, studying to be a nitwit,” she says.
One day she met an actor’s manager who casually suggested, “They’re looking for Nancy Drew. You should go up for Nancy Drew.”
“I said OK. I went up for Nancy Drew, didn’t get it but the people at Universal saw me, and they put me under contract. That’s how fast it was. I was on Christmas break from college.”
Her very first speaking role was on the series, “Quincy, M.E.” She had two lines. “Jack Klugman comes into this dress store and opens the changing room, and I’m in a bra, natch. I say something like, `You won’t find what you’re looking for in here, mister.’
“He goes, `Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ and finds the bad guy. . . . That was my first part.”
She was 19 when she auditioned for “Halloween.” “I went into the production office in Hollywood in a dumpy, tiny, little room. It was a very low budget film.”
At the time, the “quality” of the film was immaterial.
“It didn’t matter. It could’ve been anything. (I thought) `Oh, it’s a great movie because there’s my character’s name on every page of it!’ “
Though she slipped into it by accident, the handwriting was inscribed on the wall early on. “I was always an actor. I’m a ham, that’s sort of what I do. I was never a student. I needed a lot of attention, wanted attention and people to look at me. I was always an actor, it was just a matter of time.”
It’s hard to imagine her doing anything else. She says she learned from her parents: “From my dad I learned that velvet always looks good. And from my mom I learned a professional ethic, and my mom is the consummate professional. I think second-generation children, by and large, are all really ardent professionals who try triply hard to do the work well. I think that my mom instilled that in a big way.”
Married to actor Christopher Guest and the mother of two adopted children, a girl 11 1/2 and a boy 2, Curtis complains that acting does not allow enough time for family.
” This weekend (while she does interviews) is like shooting a movie. . . . So as soon as I’m finished, I’ll take a couple of years off. I have a 2-year-old. He needs me.”
