Jamie Lee Curtis names the most important movie of her career
From pioneering scream queen to 1980s pin-up to Oscar-winning legend, Jamie Lee Curtis has been on one wild ride.
The daughter of acting superstars Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, she didn’t let the nepo-baby privilege coast her through but has gone about garnering success in her unique way. Her list of famous films stretches on, encompassing various genres and time periods, and she shows absolutely zero signs of packing it in any time soon.
In the past decade or so, she has begun to get more involved in producing movies, regardless of whether she’s also in them. She was an executive producer on the three most recent Halloween movies, as well as a 2017 documentary about war photographer Chris Hondros. She served as just a regular old producer on Freakier Friday, which reunited her with Lindsay Lohan after over two decades, and on the 2025 movie The Lost Bus.
This Paul Greengrass film, inspired by the deadly 2018 Camp Fire that tore through the state of California, is based on a non-fiction book recounting the ecological disaster. Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson is a firsthand account of the fire from a resident of Paradise, Butte County, a town that was almost entirely wiped out by the flames. Curtis can remember the first time she heard this incredible story and, as she told the Radio Times, she immediately knew she had to do something with it.
“I didn’t do anything that day, and the next day, I was driving in my car in the mountains,” she recalled, “There was an NPR interview of Scott Simon interviewing Lizzie Johnson, the author of the book. And he said… ‘Lizzie, the story that got me was Kevin McKay and Mary Ludwig’. And I pulled my car over on the side of the road. I called Jason Blum, who’s my business partner, and I said, ‘Jason, I want to buy this book. I’m sending you links. It’s going to be expensive to buy, but I believe it’ll be the most important thing either one of us do in the movie business’.”
Kevin McKay is the character played by Matthew McConaughey, a school bus driver caught up in the fire. Along with schoolteacher Mary Ludwig, played by America Ferrara, McKay battles against both time and the heat to rush a group of children to safety, having only recently taken up bus driving after deciding to jack in his retail job and train to be a teacher. His and his fellow staff member’s remarkable bravery is tailor-made for the big screen, especially with the backing of Greengrass and Apple, who produced the film alongside Blumhouse.
Curtis clearly has a strong eye for a great story, as the incredibly strong reception following The Lost Bus‘ debut at the Toronto International Film Festival has proven.
