Jamie Lee Curtis names her most “crucial” movies: “That grouping of films gave me my career”
Not every child of a famous actor goes on to replicate their parents’ success. However, when you’ve got two of the all-time greats as your mum and dad, you stand a pretty good chance. Just ask Jamie Lee Curtis.
As the daughter of Psycho star Janet Leigh and Academy Award-nominated icon Tony Curtis, she grew up right in the eye of the Hollywood storm. She would have experienced a childhood most people can only dream of, and it put her in good standing for her own time on the silver screen.
Curtis’ movie debut was in one of the most important horror movies ever made: John Carpenter’s Halloween. As Laurie Strode, she followed in her mother’s footsteps as an iconic ‘scream queen’, fending off the villainous Michael Myers with a much greater success rate than Marion Crane against Norman Bates. As arguably the first protagonist in slasher movie history, Curtis laid the groundwork for dozens of successors, even if she proclaims not to be a fan of the horror genre.
Though her work from this time is now looked back on with great reverence, contemporary critics didn’t hold horror in very high regard. Curtis struggled for years to break out of this mould, only managing to find work in Halloween sequels and various other spooky movies. It wasn’t until 1983 that things really started to turn around.
She was cast as sex worker Ophelia in John Landis’ Trading Places. Her role as the stereotypical ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ brought her to a wider audience and even brought home her first major award, a Bafta for ‘Best Supporting Actress’. According to Curtis herself, it also set in motion a chain of events that would end up defining her entire life.
“If I’m not in Trading Places, John Cleese does not write A Fish Called Wanda for me,” she explained to CBS’ 60 Minutes programme. “If I’m not in A Fish Called Wanda, Jim Cameron does not write the part in True Lies for me. And that grouping of films gave me my career, for sure.”
Released five years after Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda starred Curtis as the titular character, a scheming seductress out to locate a stash of hidden treasure. She does so by putting the moves on Archie Leach, the lawyer of a noted criminal played by Mr Cleese himself. The movie further established Curtis as a capable comedian. It also apparently caused someone to die from laughing too much. If that isn’t a ringing endorsement, then nothing is.
With both horror and comedy roles under her belt, Curtis then decided to try her hand at action films. As Helen Tasker, she was one of the co-stars of James Cameron’s oft-forgotten 1993 film, True Lies. Helen is married to Harry, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a seemingly ordinary man who is secretly living a double life as a secret agent. The film was a huge success, with Curtis picking up yet another award, this time the Golden Globe for ‘Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical’.
The chain reaction caused by Curtis’ casting in Trading Places helped pave the way for the extraordinary career that followed. There’s every chance she could have made it otherwise, but her body of work would look very, very different.
