As the child of mega-famous movie stars, Jamie Lee Curtis witnessed the glamorous highs and soul-crushing lows that come with a career in Hollywood. In a lengthy interview with the Guardian published Sunday, Curtis admitted she’s been “prepping to get out” of the industry for years in part to avoid the same fate that befell Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.
“I witnessed my parents lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their life and their livelihood, when the industry rejected them at a certain age,” she explained. “I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that’s very painful.”
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“I have been self-retiring for 30 years. I have been prepping to get out, so that I don’t have to suffer the same as my family did. I want to leave the party before I’m no longer invited,” Curtis added.
Despite those three decades of self-retirement, Curtis is also enjoying a tremendous moment in her career. The long-awaited sequel to 2003’s “Freaky Friday” — appropriately titled “Freakier Friday” — will be released August 8.
Curtis was promoting the latest installment in the “Halloween” franchise, which came out in 2022, but she kept getting asked about a potentially follow-up to her lighter fare. “In every single city I went to, the only movie they asked me about besides ‘Halloween’ was ‘Freaky Friday’ – was there going to be a sequel?” she said.
So she called Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney. “I said: ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re planning on doing [a sequel], but Lindsay is old enough to have a teenager now, and I’m telling you the market for that movie exists.’”
After finding out Disney initially planned to send the movie straight to streaming, Curtis picked up the phone again and demanded a theatrical release. “And I called Bob Iger, and I called David Greenbaum [Disney Live Action president], and I called Asad Ayaz, who’s the head of marketing, and I said: ‘Guys, I have one word for you: ‘Barbie’. If you don’t think the audience that saw ‘Barbie’ is going to be the audience that goes and sees ‘Freakier Friday’, you’re wrong.’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Curtis railed against what she referred to as the “genocide of my generation” — plastic surgery — and insisted, “I’ve used that word for a long time and I use it specifically because it’s a strong word. I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance].”
“The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there’s a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances,” Curtis added. “And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the filter face is what people want.”
“I’m not filtered right now. The minute I lay a filter on and you see the before and after, it’s hard not to go: ‘Oh, well that looks better.’ But what’s better? Better is fake. And there are too many examples – I will not name them – but very recently we have had a big onslaught through media, many of those people.”
Curtis also said that despite her strong feelings on the topic, she doesn’t extend that to the choices others make. “No. No. Because I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I’m not proselytising to them. I would never say a word,” she explained. “I would never say to someone: what have you done? All I know is that it is a never-ending cycle. That, I know. Once you start, you can’t stop. But it’s not my job to give my opinion; it’s none of my business.”
Read the entire interview with Jamie Lee Curtis on the Guardian.
The post Jamie Lee Curtis Watched Her Parents’ Success ‘Slowly Erode’ as They Aged: ‘That’s Very Painful’ appeared first on TheWrap.
The post Jamie Lee Curtis Watched Her Parents’ Success ‘Slowly Erode’ as They Aged: ‘That’s Very Painful’ appeared first on The Wrap.
