‘Generations of women have been disfigured’: Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery, power, and Hollywood’s age problem | Jamie Lee Curtis
I’m scheduled to talk to Jamie Lee Curtis at 2pm UK time, and some minutes earlier than the allotted slot I dial in through video hyperlink, to be met with a imaginative and prescient of the 66-year-old actor sitting alone in a darkened room, staring impassively into the digicam. “Morning,” she says, with comedian flatness, as I make a sound of shock that’s positively not slightly scream.
Oh, hello!! I say, Are you early or am I late?
“I’m all the time early,” says the actor, deadpan. “Or as my elder daughter refers to me, ‘aggressively early’.”
Curtis is in a plain black high, heavy black-framed glasses and – importantly for this dialog – little or no make-up, whereas behind her within the gloom, a canine sleeps in a basket. She received’t say what a part of the US she’s in past the actual fact it’s a “witness safety cabin within the woods” the place “I’m making an attempt to have privateness” – an arch approach, I assume, of claiming she’s not in LA – and instantly begins itemising different conditions through which she has been recognized to be early: Hollywood premieres (“They inform me I can’t go to the pink carpet but as a result of it’s not open and so my driver, Cal, and I drive round and park within the shade”); early-morning textual content messages (“I wake folks up”); even her work schedule: “I present up, do the work, after which I get the fuck out.”
That is the quick model; in full, the opening minutes of our dialog contain Curtis free-associating by way of references to the reminiscence of her mom and stepfather lacking her efficiency in a faculty musical in Connecticut; the negotiating goals of the make-up artists’ union; the nickname by which she wish to be recognized if she ever turns into a grandmother (“Fifo” – quick for “first in first out”); and what, precisely, her earliness is about. Not, as you may think, nervousness, however: “You understand, actually, I’ve carried out sufficient evaluation of all this – it’s management.” Curtis is aware of her early arrivals strike some folks as impolite. “My daughter Annie says: ‘Folks aren’t prepared for you.’ And I principally say: ‘Properly, that’s their drawback. They need to be prepared.’”
“That’s their drawback” is, together with, “I don’t give a shit any extra” a traditional Curtis expression that goes a great distance in direction of explaining why so many individuals love her – and so they actually do love her – a lady who on high of charming us for many years in a clutch of iconic roles, has crossed over, recently, into that paradoxical territory through which she is beloved exactly as a result of she’s carried out worrying about what others consider her. Particularly, she doesn’t care in regards to the orthodoxies of an business through which girls are shamed into having beauty surgical procedure earlier than they hit 30. Curtis has spoken of having a procedure herself at 25, following a remark made on the set of a movie that her eyes have been “saggy”. Regretting it, she has within the years since made the genuinely outlandish and galvanizing determination to put on her hair gray and eschew surgical tweaks. That Curtis is the kid of two Hollywood icons, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and thus an insider since start, both makes this extra shocking or else explains it fully, however both approach, she has turn into somebody who seems to function outdoors the same old Hollywood guidelines. “I’ve turn into fairly brusque,” says Curtis, of individuals making calls for on her time when she’s not open for enterprise. “And I’ve no drawback saying: ‘Again the fuck off.’”
I can consider it. Throughout the course of our dialog, Curtis’s angle – which is broadly charming, sometimes hectoring and seems to be pushed by a normal and sardonic belligerence – is that of somebody pushing again in opposition to a lifetime of misconceptions, from which, 4 months shy of her 67th birthday, she lastly feels herself to be free. Curtis is in an excellent part of her profession, one which, regardless of starring in big hits – from the Halloween franchise and A Fish Referred to as Wanda (1988) to Buying and selling Locations (1983), True Lies (1994) and the superlative Knives Out (2019) – has all the time eluded her. The actual fact is, movie star apart, Curtis has by no means been thought-about a very heavyweight actor or been A-list within the typical approach. At its most trivial, this has required her to climate small slights, equivalent to being ignored by the Girls In Movie group, with its tedious schedule of panels and occasions. (“I nonetheless exist outdoors of Girls In Movie,” she snaps. “They’re not asking me to their lunch.”) And, extra broadly, has seen Curtis fully ignored by the Oscars since she shot Halloween, her first film, on the age of 19.
Properly, all that has modified now. In 2023, Curtis received an Oscar for finest supporting actress for her function as Deirdre Beaubeirdre within the genre-bending film Everything Everywhere All at Once. That very same yr, she appeared in a single episode of the multi-award-winning TV present The Bear as Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic mom of a big Italian clan – she calls it “essentially the most exhilarating inventive expertise I’ll ever have”. Anybody who noticed this extraordinary efficiency continues to be speaking about it, and it led to a bigger function on the present. Doorways that had all the time been shut to Curtis flew open. For years, she had tried and did not get film and TV initiatives off the bottom. Now, she lists the forthcoming initiatives she had a hand in bringing to the display: “Freakier Friday, TV collection Scarpetta, survival film The Misplaced Bus, 4 different TV reveals and two different films.” She has turn into a “prolific producer”, she says, in addition to a Hollywood elder and function mannequin. All of which makes Curtis chuckle – the truth that, lastly, “at 66, I get to be a boss”. You’d higher consider she’ll be profiting from it.
The film Curtis and I are ostensibly right here to speak about is Freakier Friday, the follow-up to Freaky Friday, the monster Disney hit of 2003 through which Curtis and Lindsay Lohan appeared as a mom and daughter who swap our bodies with hilarious penalties. I defy anybody who loved the primary movie to not really feel each infinitely aged by revisiting the solid greater than 20 years on, and in addition to not discover it a wildly fulfilling return. The teenage Lohan of the primary film is now a 37-year-old mom of 15-year-old Harper, performed by Julia Butters, whereas the introduction of a second teenager – Harper’s mortal enemy Lily, performed by Sophia Hammons – permits for a four-way physique swap through which Curtis-as-grandma is inhabited by Hammons’ British wannabe influencer. If it lacks the simplicity of the primary film, I totally loved it and look ahead to taking my 10-year-old women when it opens subsequent month.
It’s also a film that introduced Curtis with an odd set of challenges. She has an issue with “fairly”. When Curtis herself was a youngster, she says, she was “cute however not fairly”. She watched each her mother and father’ careers atrophy after their youthful beauty began to wane. A part of her shtick round earliness is an virtually existential refusal to dwell on Hollywood’s timeline, as a result of, she says: “I witnessed my mother and father lose the very factor that gave them their fame and their life and their livelihood, when the business rejected them at a sure age. I watched them attain unbelievable success after which have it slowly erode to the place it was gone. And that’s very painful.”
In consequence, says Curtis: “I’ve been self-retiring for 30 years. I’ve been prepping to get out, in order that I don’t need to undergo the identical as my household did. I wish to depart the get together earlier than I’m not invited.” Within the film, Curtis was allowed to maintain her gray hair (though it seems to be shot by way of with blond) however her trademark pixie reduce was changed with one thing longer and softer. I take it with a pinch when she says issues equivalent to, “I’m an previous woman” and, “I’m going to die quickly” – even in age-hating Hollywood, this appears overegged – however one takes the purpose that she discovered the standard aesthetic calls for of Freakier Friday, through which she “needed to look fairly, I had to concentrate to [flattering] lighting, and garments and hair and make-up and nails”, a lot more durable than enjoying a dishevelled alcoholic in The Bear.
However, Curtis is a professional and, in fact, gave Disney the full-throated, zany-but-still-kinda-hot grandma they needed. (There’s a scene through which she tries to elucidate numerous board video games – Boggle, Parcheesi – to the owl-eyed teenagers that reminds you simply how advantageous a comic book actor she is.) It’s the story of how Freakier Friday happened, nonetheless, that actually provides perception into who Curtis is: an absolute, indefatigable and inveterate hustler. “I’m proudly owning my hustle, now,” she says and is at her most spectacular, her most charming and energised when she is speaking in regards to the hustle.
To wit: Curtis was on a world tour selling the Halloween franchise that made her identify and that loved a massively profitable reboot in 2018, when one thing in regards to the crowd response struck her. “In each single metropolis I went to, the one film they requested me about apart from Halloween was Freaky Friday – was there going to be a sequel?” When she bought again from the tour, she referred to as Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO. “I mentioned: ‘Look, I don’t know if you happen to’re planning on doing [a sequel], however Lindsay is sufficiently old to have a youngster now, and I’m telling you the marketplace for that film exists.’”
Because the undertaking got here collectively, Curtis discovered that Disney was planning to launch Freakier Friday straight to streaming. “And I referred to as Bob Iger” – it’s at this level you begin to think about Iger seeing Curtis’s identify flash up on his cellphone and experiencing a slight drop in spirits – “and I referred to as David Greenbaum [Disney Live Action president], and I referred to as Asad Ayaz, who’s the top of selling, and I mentioned: ‘Guys, I’ve one phrase for you: Barbie. If you happen to don’t assume the viewers that noticed Barbie goes to be the viewers that goes and sees Freakier Friday, you’re mistaken.’”
That is what Curtis means when she refers to herself as “a advertising individual”, or “a weapon of mass promotion”, and she or he has carried out it for ever. It’s what she did in 2002 when she lobbied Extra journal to let her pose in her underwear and no make-up – “They didn’t come to me and say: ‘Hey Jamie, how about you are taking off your garments and present America that you simply’re chubby?’ The Extra journal factor occurred as a result of I mentioned it ought to occur, and I even titled the piece: True Thighs.”
And it’s what she was doing a couple of weeks earlier than our interview when she turned as much as the photoshoot in LA bearing a bunch of props she had ordered from Amazon, together with outsized plastic lips and a blond wig. Curtis says: “There are a lot of, many actresses who love the gown up, who love garments, who love style, who love being a mannequin. I. Hate. It. I really feel like I’m having to wrestle together with your thought of me versus my thought of me. As a result of I’ve labored onerous to determine who I’m, and I don’t need you to … I’ve struggled with it my complete life.”
Curtis is emphatic that her concepts be precisely interpreted and, earlier than our assembly, despatched an e-mail through her publicist explaining her considering behind the shoot. “The wax lips is my assertion in opposition to cosmetic surgery. I’ve been very vocal in regards to the genocide of a technology of girls by the cosmeceutical industrial advanced, who’ve disfigured themselves. The wax lips actually sends it residence.”
Clearly, the phrase “genocide” could be very sturdy and dangers inflicting offence, given its correct that means. To Curtis, nonetheless, it’s correct. “I’ve used that phrase for a very long time and I exploit it particularly as a result of it’s a powerful phrase. I consider that we’ve got worn out a technology or two of pure human [appearance]. The idea which you can alter the way in which you look by way of chemical substances, surgical procedures, fillers – there’s a disfigurement of generations of predominantly girls who’re altering their appearances. And it’s aided and abetted by AI, as a result of now the filter face is what folks need. I’m not filtered proper now. The minute I lay a filter on and also you see the earlier than and after, it’s onerous to not go: ‘Oh, nicely that appears higher.’ However what’s higher? Higher is pretend. And there are too many examples – I cannot identify them – however very just lately we’ve got had a giant onslaught by way of media, a lot of these folks.”
Properly, on the danger of sounding harsh, one of many folks implicated by Curtis’s criticism is Lindsay Lohan, her Freakier Friday co-star and a lady in her late 30s who has seemingly had plenty of beauty procedures at a startlingly younger age (although Lohan denies having had surgical procedure). When it comes to mentoring Lohan, with whom Curtis remained pals after making the primary movie, she says: “I’m bossy, very bossy, however I attempt to thoughts my very own enterprise. She doesn’t want my recommendation. She’s a totally functioning, good lady, inventive individual. Privately, she’s requested me questions, however nothing that’s greater than an older pal you may ask.”
However given the stridency of Curtis’s place on beauty surgical procedure, don’t youthful girls really feel judged in her presence? Isn’t it awkward? “No. No. As a result of I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I’m not proselytising to them. I might by no means say a phrase. I might by no means say to somebody: what have you ever carried out? All I do know is that it’s a endless cycle. That, I do know. When you begin, you possibly can’t cease. But it surely’s not my job to present my opinion; it’s none of my enterprise.”
As for Lohan, Curtis says: “I felt great maternal look after Lindsay after the primary film, and continued to really feel that. When she’d come to LA, I might see her. She and I’ve remained pals, and now we’re type of colleagues. I really feel much less maternal in direction of her as a result of she’s a mommy now herself and doesn’t want my maternal care, and has, clearly, a mother – Dina’s a terrific grandma.”
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The final level in regards to the horror of making an attempt to remain younger through surgical procedure is wise and, in fact, I agree. Behind my thoughts, nonetheless, I’ve a small, pinging reservation that I can’t fairly put my finger on. I recommend to Curtis that she has pure benefits by advantage of being a film star, which, on the one hand, in fact, makes her extra weak round problems with ageing, however however, she’s naturally lovely and everybody loves her, and most common girls who –
“I’ve quick gray hair!” she protests. “Different girls can –”
They will, in fact! However it’s essential to have a bodily confidence that falls outdoors the conventional –
“No! No!” She received’t have it. “I really feel such as you’re making an attempt to say: ‘You’re in some rarefied air, Jamie.’” I’m not! She responds: “By the way in which, genetics – you possibly can’t fuck with genetics. You wish to know the place my genetics lie?” She lifts up an arm and wobbles her bingo wings at me. “Are you kidding me? By the way in which, you’re not going to see an image of me in a tank high, ever.” That is Curtis’s pink line. “I put on long-sleeve shirts; that’s simply frequent sense.” She provides me a beady look. “I problem you that I’m in some rarefied air.”
I take into consideration this afterwards to attempt to make clear my objection, which I assume is that this: that the principle cause girls in center age dye their hair is to stave off invisibility, which, with the best respect, isn’t among the many veteran film star’s issues. But it surely’s a minor quibble given what I genuinely consider is Curtis’s useful and iconoclastic gesture.
And when she talks about beauty surgical procedure as habit, she ought to know. Curtis was an alcoholic till she bought sober at 40 and is emphatic and spectacular on this topic, the present poster lady – actually: she’s on indicators throughout LA for an habit charity with the tagline: “My bravest factor? Getting sober”. I’m inquisitive about how her intense want for management labored, in these years way back, alongside her habit?
“I’m a managed addict,” she says. “In restoration we speak about how, so as to begin recovering, it’s important to hit what you name a ‘backside’. It’s a must to crash and burn, lose your self and your loved ones and your job and your assets so as to know that the way in which you have been residing didn’t work. I confer with myself as an Everest backside; I’m the best backside I do know. Once I acknowledged my lack of management, I used to be in a really managed state. I misplaced not one of the exterior elements of my life. The one factor I had misplaced was my very own sense of myself and vanity.”
Externally, throughout these years of habit, she appeared to be doing very nicely. Her profession boomed. She married Christopher Visitor, the actor, screenwriter and director, and so they have two youngsters and have stayed married for greater than 40 years. (There’s no miracle to this. As Curtis places it, wryly: “It’s simply that we’ve got chosen to remain married. And be married folks. And we love one another. And I consider we respect one another. And I’m certain there’s slightly little bit of hatred in there, too.”) I ponder, then, whether or not Curtis’s success throughout these years disguised how severe a state of affairs she was in together with her habit?
“There’s nobody technique to be an addict or an alcoholic. Folks disguise issues – I used to be fortunate, and I’m formidable, and so I by no means let that self-medication get in the way in which of my ambition or work or creativity. It by no means bled by way of. Nobody would ever have mentioned that had been a problem for me.”
The place was the price?
“The exterior prices are terrible for folks; however the inner prices are extra sinister and lethal, as a result of to grasp that you’re powerless over one thing apart from your individual thoughts and creativity is one thing. However that was a very long time in the past. I’m an previous woman now.”
She is doing higher than ever. With the Oscar below her belt, Curtis has simply returned within the new season of The Bear and has a slew of initiatives – many developed with Jason Blum, the veteran horror producer with whom she has a growth deal – coming down the road. Watching her bravura efficiency as Donna Berzatto, I did marvel if enjoying an alcoholic had been in any approach traumatic. She flashes me a glance of pure vehemence. “Right here’s what’s traumatic: not with the ability to categorical your vary as an artist. That’s traumatic. To spend your total public life holding again vary. And depth. And complexity. And contradiction. And rage. And ache. And sorrow.” She builds momentum: “And to have been restricted to a a lot smaller palette of inventive, emotional work.
“For me, it was an unleashing of fifty years of being a performer who was by no means thought-about to have any vary. And so the liberty, and the arrogance, that I used to be given by Chris [Storer, the show’s creator], and the writing, which leads you … all over the place you should go – it was exhilarating.” She continues: “It took no toll. The toll has been 40 years of holding again one thing I do know is right here.”
Properly, there she is, the Curtis who thrills and evokes. Among the many many new initiatives is The Misplaced Bus, a survival catastrophe film for AppleTV+ a couple of bus full of kids making an attempt to flee wildfires. The concept got here to Curtis whereas she was driving on the freeway, listening to an NPR report on the lethal wildfires of 2018 within the small city of Paradise, California. She pulled over and referred to as Blum; the film, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, drops later this yr. For one more undertaking, she managed to steer Patricia Cornwell, the celebrity thriller author, to launch the rights for her Scarpetta collection, which, in addition to producing, Curtis will star in alongside Nicole Kidman.
This burst of exercise is one thing Curtis ascribes to the “freedom” she derived from shedding “all self-importance”, and over the course of our dialog “freedom” is the phrase she most steadily makes use of to explain what she values in life. Freedom is a very loaded and treasured idea for these on the opposite aspect of habit and, says Curtis, “I’ve lifeless relations; I’ve mother and father who each had points with consuming and medicines. I’ve a lifeless sibling. I’ve quite a few pals who by no means discovered the liberty, which is absolutely the objective – proper? Freedom.”
It’s a precept that additionally extends to her household. Curtis’s daughter Ruby, 29, is trans, and I ask how insulated they’re from Donald Trump’s aggressively anti-trans insurance policies. “I wish to watch out as a result of I defend my household,” says Curtis. “I’m an outspoken advocate for the appropriate of human beings to be who they’re. And if a governmental organisation tries to assert they’re not allowed to be who they’re, I’ll combat in opposition to that. I’m a John Steinbeck pupil – he’s my favorite author – and there’s a phenomenal piece of writing from East of Eden in regards to the freedom of individuals to be who they’re. Any authorities, faith, establishment making an attempt to restrict that freedom is what I have to combat in opposition to.”
There are a lot of, many different topics to cycle by way of, together with Curtis’s friendship with Mariska Hargitay, whose new documentary about her mom, Jayne Mansfield, hit Curtis significantly onerous, not least as a result of “Jayne’s home was subsequent to Tony Curtis’s home – that huge pink home on Carolwood Drive that Tony Curtis lived in and Sonny and Cher owned previous to him.” (I don’t know if referring to her dad as “Tony Curtis,” is meant to attraction, however it does.) There’s additionally a faculty reunion she went to over a decade in the past; the sensation she has of being “a 14-year-old power bunny”; the actual fact we’ve been announcing “Everest” mistaken all this time; the function performed by lyrics from Justin Timberlake’s Like I Love You in her friendship with Lindsay Lohan; and the “Gordian knot” of what occurs when not being a model turns into your model.
Curtis may, one suspects, summon an infinite stream of enthusiasms and – maybe no higher commercial for ageing, this – share pressing ideas about each final one in every of them. In an business through which folks weigh their phrases, veil their opinions and pander to each passing preferrred, she has gone in a special course, one unrestrained by the same old timidities. Or as she places it together with her typical take-it-or-leave-it flatness, “the liberty to have my very own thoughts, wherever it’s going to take me. I’m comfy with that journey and reject the remainder.”
Freakier Friday is in Australian cinemas from 7 August and from 8 August within the UK and US
