How a “hated, hated, hated” movie almost cost Jamie Lee Curtis an Oscar
Hollywood history is littered with stories of actors who passed on roles that would go on to make millions, from Will Smith turning down The Matrix to John Travolta saying no to Forrest Gump – although to be fair to him, it was so he could do Pulp Fiction. But what about actors who ‘almost’ passed on roles that would prove life-changing? Well, Jamie Lee Curtis has a good story about that.
Curtis was so good in the dizzying 2022 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once that it’s almost unimaginable to think she would have considered not bothering with it, but that’s what very nearly came to pass – and it’s due to a film featuring a dead, flatulent Daniel Radcliffe.
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheineert, known collectively as The Daniels, are the men behind the 2016 film Swiss Army Man, a completely surreal effort starring the former Harry Potter as a corpse who washes up on a beach only to be adopted by a marooned man played by Paul Dano, who uses it to find new meaning (and as a fart-powered means of transportation).
So bizarre is the concept that many people quite understandably had something of a ‘WTF’ reaction to it, although it has since gone on to be thought of as a bit of a cult classic. And it was The Daniels who would go on to create ‘Everything…’ six years later, the astonishing family drama/kung fu/multiverse spanning genre mash-up that swept the board at the Oscars.
Curtis, of course, was a revelation in that film as the Internal Revenue Service agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre and ended up winning an Oscar herself for ‘Best Supporting Actress’. But she would never have got her hands on the gong had she listened to some advice close to home. She told Moviemaker, “I will tell you something. There is someone I employ, who I’ve loved and known for a long time, who I’ve worked with for a long time, who hated, hated, hated Swiss Army Man. When I was considering working with (The Daniels), he was like, ‘Jamie, don’t. This will not be a good thing.’”
Luckily, she decided to go against that advice and now deservedly has a golden statuette on her mantelpiece, and she has the head of her production company to thank for pushing her to do it, a writer and director named Russell Goldman.
She added, “When I mentioned that I had been sent a script by The Daniels, Russell literally exploded. His head exploded. He then had to come back down to earth, reassemble… because he was so excited… I think Russell was the reason I ultimately did Everything Everywhere All At Once, because he loved them so much.”
The Daniels’ next much-anticipated film is due to hit cinemas in the summer of 2026, but details are sketchy to say the least, and the project is shrouded in mystery – other than the fact it was moved in order not to clash with a new Steven Spielberg UFO film starring Emily Blunt and Colin Firth that is on the way next year.
Curtis, meanwhile, will shortly be seen in the political comedy Ella McCay alongside Woody Harrelson and has several other movies on the way, including a film written and directed by Goldman about a woman who is repeatedly scammed online and Spychosis, an action comedy about a spy on the run from assassins who needs a chip removed from his head.
