Jamie Lee Curtis
Wild Card with Rachel Martin
NPR
4.7 • 990 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jamie Lee Curtis never wanted to be an actor. She tells Rachel, despite having famous show business parents, she originally thought she’d become a police officer. Jamie talks about how she unexpectedly wound up in Hollywood, her fight against unhealthy beauty standards in the industry, and why she thinks of her children’s books as “her best thing.” Jamie Lee Curtis is currently in “Ella McCay.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just a heads up, there's a bit of cursing in this episode. |
| 0:03.6 | Hey everybody, I am just popping in because we want to know what you think Wildcard is doing well and how we could improve. |
| 0:10.1 | If you can, please take a short anonymous survey at npr.org slash wildcard survey, all one word. |
| 0:16.6 | It takes less than 10 minutes, and you'd be doing us a huge favor by filling it out. |
| 0:20.6 | We'll also be giving three randomly huge favor by filling it out. |
| 0:26.1 | We'll also be giving three randomly selected respondents a $25 gift card as a thank you. |
| 0:30.3 | Again, that survey link is npr.org slash wildcard survey. |
| 0:34.6 | You can also click on the link in the comments or in our episode description. |
| 0:35.6 | Thank you so much. |
| 0:38.5 | What do you look forward to when you're older? |
| 0:48.3 | Getting older. Yeah. Just getting older. Just more, you know, even thinner skin. You know, because the thin skin, because the thin skin thing is super fun. |
| 0:55.9 | I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard. |
| 0:58.2 | The show where cards control the conversation. |
| 1:02.8 | Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. |
| 1:06.1 | Questions pulled from a deck of cards. |
| 1:08.3 | They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. |
| 1:11.5 | My guest this week is Jamie Lee Curtis. I never was truly an Oshinue and not really truly |
| 1:17.1 | a leading lady, but I've become a bitch of a character actress. Because the truth is, |
| 1:24.0 | I was a character actress all along. I'm just going to get this out of the way at the top. |
| 1:29.2 | When I grow up, I want to be Jamie Lee Curtis. |
| 1:32.5 | I don't mean I want to be a cultural icon with leading roles in some of the most important |
| 1:36.5 | movies and shows of our time, Halloween, everything everywhere all at once, the bear, and |
... |
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