Jamie Lee Curtis thought she’d be fired from ‘Halloween’ after one day: “I made a mistake”
Jamie Lee Curtis could have lost her status as the definitive scream queen.
There is an ongoing debate among horror film buffs as to when exactly the slasher film genre began, as there are multiple classics that could be singled out as having birthed the movement. Although Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho created perhaps the most terrifying screen death of all-time, the Italian giallo films that followed in the next decade amped up the idea of a mysterious serial killer.
Black Christmas only heightened those terrors even more by grounding them in a realistic setting and exploring the perspective of the victims, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre became an instant game-changer thanks to the realistic setting that Tobe Hooper created, as many people believed the false notion that it was based on a true story.
Nonetheless, Halloween is remembered as being the first true slasher film because of how perfectly it nailed the formula, and there wasn’t an element more important than nailing the depiction of Laurie Strode, the final girl played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Even if Marilyn Burns’ portrayal of Sally in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had technically been the first “final girl”, Curtis gave a performance that helped turn Halloween into a phenomenon.
Although Curtis became a massive star in the next two decades and would win an Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for her performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Halloween is still the film for which she is best remembered. However, Curtis remembered that she almost lost the role after her first day of shooting.
“I lived with a hairdresser named Tina Cassidy, we rented a house together in Studio City,” Curtis said. “I finished my first day of work and I came back to this house we lived in. The phone rang that night and Tina said, ‘Jamie, it’s John Carpenter.’ In my day, and I’m sure it happens now, people get fired after their first day of work. In my day, and I’m sure it happens now, people get fired after their first day of work. You know, the director thinks about it and goes, ‘Uh, I made a mistake.’”
Although Curtis had expected the worst, she was surprised to hear how encouraging Carpenter was.
“I remember this slow walk over to the phone and doing that thing of like, ‘Um, hello?’” Curtis said. “He’s from Kentucky, I believe, and he was like, ‘Hey, darlin’, it’s John. I just wanna tell ya how happy I am and how fantastic you were today. I just know it’s gonna be amazing.’ That just doesn’t happen, and that was all John Carpenter. That’s how it began.”
Although he is sometimes regarded as being a bit of a grump, Carpenter has a strong reputation among actors and has boosted the careers of many all-time great stars. He was also right to cast Curtis in Halloween, as the depth that she brought to the role of Laurie was essential to making the film feel more realistic and eerie. It would become apparent within the sequels that it was Laurie who was the most important character in Halloween, and not Michael Myers.
While none of the Halloween sequels has been great, the ones that have stood out as being only halfway decent include 1981’s Halloween 2, 1998’s Halloween: H20, and 2018’s Halloween, all of which Curtis returned for. Not even Rob Zombie’s Halloween films, which cast a different actor as Laurie, were able to recapture the same magic as what Curtis and Carpenter had done together.
