The one thing Jamie Lee Curtis always demands on set: “There isn’t hierarchy in art”
Jamie Lee Curtis has been a big star for most of her life. From her groundbreaking turn in Halloween to hilarious comedies like Trading Places and A Fish Called Wanda to winning an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, it’s safe to say that her lofty potential has been thoroughly fulfilled.
Given that she’s accomplished all this in her career and she’s a baroness—her husband, Christopher Guest, inherited a barony from his father in 1996—you’d expect a little bit of ego from Curtis. The icon, who will soon be reprising her role as Tess Coleman in a Freaky Friday sequel, has only ever known the celebrity world, being a child to two Hollywood notables, Tony Curtis and Janet Lee. You could almost forgive her for being a bit arrogant. This isn’t the case, however, not according to the woman herself.
Speaking to Kevin Hart on his podcast Gold Minds, the veteran performer highlighted the innate differences between being famous and not being famous on a film set. “There’s something really uneven about our position on a set, on a movie, in this arena,” she explained, “You guys know our names, we don’t know yours. There’s something inequitable to me about that.”
To address this issue, Curtis decided to introduce a new policy for every film she works on. “On a movie set, if we were all working together, we would all be wearing name tags so that tomorrow when we came in, I would be able to then say ‘good morning [Sabine]’ without even [a] thought because I’ve learned her name,” she revealed. “I just want it to be equitable because it’s an important thing. It’s art—there isn’t hierarchy in art. It’s supposed to be a group of people.”
The reason why the credits at the end of movies are so long is that it takes a small army actually to get anything made. From the technical crew to the hair and makeup department to set-builders to drivers to the people who provide catering, hundreds of people work tirelessly to provide relatively minor contributions to the film business but keep the wheels turning in a major way. Considering that actors are the primary faces of the industry, there can be a natural disconnect between them and the rest of the team. Curtis’ idea eliminates that, putting everyone on a level playing field and removing any chances of awkward encounters.
She doesn’t explain when she decided on the nametag idea, but it had to have been prior to 2021’s Halloween Kills. The film marked the sixth time she had played the role of Laurie Strode, the series’ protagonist and original ‘scream queen’. During the filming of Curtis’ final scene in the movie, she looked up and noticed that all of the crew’s nametags said the same thing: ‘We are Laurie Strode’. A touching gesture, even if Curtis is a self-professed horror hater.
Big movie stars almost always carry an air of inaccessibility, such that they belong to a different plane than us mere mortals. It’s nice to see that performers Curtis’ calibre are trying to change that and recognise the great work done by all the people behind the scenes.
