The one movie Jamie Lee Curtis is “embarrassed” by
The daughter of the royal cinematic duo Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, actor Jamie Lee Curtis became a scream queen in 1980s Hollywood, making a name for herself in popular horror movies of the era. Ever since, Curtis has blossomed into a global star, earning collaborations with the likes of John Carpenter, James Cameron, Rian Johnson and, most recently, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for the celebrated release, Everything Everywhere All at Once.
After multiple TV roles, it wasn’t until her first collaboration with John Carpenter in her feature film debut, Halloween, that she would gain some career traction, achieving popularity for her role in the iconic horror flick. Further success for the burgeoning scream queen came after Carpenter’s 1980 follow-up, The Fog, Paul Lynch’s Prom Night and Roger Spottiswoode’s Terror Train.
Whilst she built her career, taking on a steady amount of major releases, including Carpenter’s Escape from New York and the sequel to her debut movie Halloween II, Curtis also inadvertently became an American sex symbol. This would reach its peak in 1985 when she starred as an aerobics instructor alongside John Travolta in James Bridges’ Perfect, but the release of Trading Places two years earlier would also add to this.
Taking a major supporting role in the John Landis Christmas comedy, appearing beside stars Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis plays the sex worker Ophelia, a flamboyant role which saw the actor appear in a nude scene.
“Embarrassed,” by the scene many years later, Curtis sat down with People early in 2022 to speak about the influential movie moment. “I was 21 years old and the part required Ophelia to take off her dress,” the actor stated, adding: “Did I like doing it? No. Did I feel embarrassed that I was doing it? Yes. Did I look OK? Yeah. Did I know what I was doing? Yeah. Did I like it? No. Was I doing it because it was the job? Yes”.
Continuing, Curtis added, “I wouldn’t do it today, it’s the last thing in the world I would do now. I also am married for 37 years, I wasn’t married then. I’m a mother of children. Absolutely not”.
Whilst she is embarrassed by the scene, there’s no doubt that the moment in Landis’ comedy served as a breakthrough for her later career, gaining significant attention that would lead to her taking a role in Perfect in 1985, as well as Cameron’s True Lies in 1994. In Cameron’s film, Curtis’ character, Helen, performs a striptease that is played more for laughs than for dramatic sincerity, with the actor recalling her relief when she saw the scene with her father, Tony Curtis.
Speaking on the PEOPLE in the ’90s podcast, she remembered watching the moment during a screening of the movie: “Thousands of people — and you know, it gets really quiet during that sequence, because it’s a little sexy…Then when [Helen] falls and then gets back up, oh my God. The place, it was a huge … because you’re anxious. Then the laugh, and it’s all [director James Cameron]. To his great credit, it’s all him. He knew, it’s a comedy. It’s a comedy”.
Take a look at the trailer for John Landis’ 1983 movie, Trading Places, below.
