Jamie Lee Curtis, the Original Scream Queen

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2019

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jamie Lee Curtis comes from Hollywood royalty as the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. She credits her mother’s role in “Psycho” for helping her land her first feature role, as the lead in “Halloween,” in 1978. “I’m never going to pretend I got that all on my own,” she tells The New Yorker’s Rachel Syme. But Curtis says she never intended to act, and never saw herself as a star: “I was not pretty,” she explains; “I was ‘cute.’ ” Eventually, the pressure she felt to conform in order to keep working led to a surgical procedure, which led to an opiate addiction. Curtis talks with Syme about recovery, second chances, and more than forty years of films between “Halloween” and Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out.” Plus, the chef at one of Los Angeles’s best restaurants on how to build a woman-friendly kitchen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Jamie Lee Curtis descends from Hollywood royalty.
0:18.2	She's the daughter of Janet Lee and Tony Curtis. But if that sort of Hollywood
0:22.5	history isn't your thing exactly, you still know Jamie Lee Curtis, who shot to fame in the
0:27.8	original Halloween. Tommy, Halloween night, it's when people play tricks on each other. It's all
0:33.9	I make-believe. I think Richard was just trying to scare you. I saw the boogeyman. I saw him outside.
0:40.4	The boogeyman can only come out on Halloween night, right?
0:42.7	Right.
0:43.7	While I'm here tonight, I'm not about to let anything happen to you.
0:46.8	Curtis eventually started playing in comedies like trading places with Eddie Murphy,
0:51.4	and the weirdly unforgettable, a fish called Wanda.
0:54.8	I'm setting up a guy who's incredibly important to us who's going to tell me
0:58.1	where the loot is, and if they're going to come and arrest you,
1:00.5	and you'll come loping in like Rambo without a jockstrap,
1:03.0	and you dangle him at a fifth-floor window.
1:05.2	Now, was that smart?
1:07.3	Okay.
1:07.8	Was it shrewd?
1:08.9	Was it good tactics, or was it stupid?
1:13.5	Don't call me stupid.
1:15.6	Her new film is also in the oddly comedic vein.
1:18.7	Curtis is one of the leads in Ryan Johnson's Knives Out,
	...

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