Jamie Lee Curtis Says She Is ‘Not Who You Think I Am’ and Has Been Working to Show That in Her Recent Work
One of the original “Scream Queens,” as well as a legitimate sex symbol through much of the 1980s and ’90s, Jamie Lee Curtis had managed to fit in one box or another throughout most of her career, a fact made all the more clear when one learns she was born into Hollywood royalty as the daughter of screen legends Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. However, as Curtis turned the corner on 60 a few years back, she realized she needed to stop meeting everyone else’s expectations and go after the kind of work that truly fed her creativity.
“I blew up the mood boards because I’m not who you think I am,” Curtis said in a recent interview with Empire. “That’s probably the biggest crux of it: I’m not who you think I am. Let me show you. I am way more than you think I am.”
More from IndieWire
This shift in her career resulted in her going after the role of unstable matriarch Donna Berzatto on “The Bear,” for which she won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress, and her Oscar-winning turn as a demented tax auditor in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Most recently, her supporting performance in “The Last Showgirl” earned her a nomination at the 2025 SAG Awards. These were parts that allowed Curtis to embrace her authentic, weird-self while still mining the creative challenges each character presented and were taken on out of a desire to make her final working years her most important ones.
“When I turned 60, I really hit that moment of thinking that I was going to die soon,” said Curtis. “I looked at the actuarial table, and I was like, ‘Whoa! Shit!’ And I realized that the only tragedy about my eventual death — because I’ve had a gorgeous life — is the creativity that I’ve kept inside me that I never brought out.”
In addition to all the on-screen work she’s done over the last few years, Curtis has also taken to screenwriting and producing, having formed a deal with Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions with the hope of directing her own work one day soon. She also brought him “Scarpetta,” an upcoming TV series adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s books starring Nicole Kidman, “The Lost Bus,” which depicts the aftermath of the 2018 wildfires on the town of Paradise, California (Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera are currently attached with Paul Greengrass set to direct), as well as two other projects that remain under wraps.
“Jason Blum gave me a deal because I’m hungry for this,” Curtis told Empire. “I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life. I’ve been writing scripts since I was first an actor. It’s an extraordinary moment for me.”
As much as she’s been enjoying this career renaissance, there are evergreen parts of the entertainment business Curtis still struggles to bend to.
“I don’t like the fantasy part of show-off business,” she said. “Every red carpet is a fashion statement that absolutely terrifies me, because it’s this fantasy — as if these people own those clothes, as if they look like that. That idea that we put that out into the world. That posturing is something that I am not comfortable with.”
Even so, there’s something about the work she’s been able to take on in recent years that has allowed her to embrace her true self as well. As an actor, she doesn’t always want to have to lean on the pretend.
“Lately I’ve been able to become characters which have freed me from any vanity, which then frees me as an artist – because then it doesn’t matter, because then I’m just doing the work,” said Curtis. “And I’ve always wanted to do the work.”
“The Last Showgirl” is currently in theaters from Roadside Attractions.
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
