She doesn’t really look anything like either of her famous parents. Apparently, her relationship with her father was not great, so it’s probably a bit of a relief to her that she doesn’t look like him, but she doesn’t look much like her mother, either. Her face seems longer than either of theirs. I think she inherited the shape of her eyes from Tony Curtis and the shape of her mouth from Janet Leigh, but in looks as well as in style, she is definitely her own woman. And a damn fine one at that.
While mostly, she seems to be known as a scream queen, having made her feature debut as Laurie Strode, the Final Girl of Halloween, that’s never how I think of her first. Part of that probably is that I’m not a huge horror fan. I made myself watch Halloween a few years ago, and I liked it more than I was expecting to—though it’s really obvious to me that it was in fact filmed primarily in South Pasadena, California, and that’s not just because I recognized a few locations. However, I haven’t felt the need to revisit it since then, either.
No, when I think Jamie Lee Curtis, I think about what a fine, gifted comedienne she is. The first thing that comes to mind for me is actually her sitcom from the late ’80s and early ’90s, Anything But Love, where she played a seriously normal journalist opposite Richard Lewis as a neurotic one. She’s also, of course, great in A Fish Called Wanda, and finding out that she’s in it makes me want to see the TV series of Operation Petticoat, even though I think it’s fairly creepy that she’s playing the character who was her own father’s love interest in the movie.
What’s more, she also seems to be a philanthropist and a basically nice person. She’s committed enough to her fandom to attend the Warcraft premiere in costume, and that’s heartwarming in a way that I’m not sure a lot of people understand. It isn’t just that she was there and excited about it, it’s that she was open about participating in two hobbies that aren’t considered all that cool. Not just video games, and MMORPGs at that, but cosplay. I literally cannot think of another instance of cosplay on the red carpet, and it’s kind of awkward for me to admit that I would seriously consider it if I were a celebrity. But that’s okay—Jamie Lee Curtis has made it okay.
For horror fans, there’s Halloween. For action fans, I suppose there’s True Lies. For comedy fans, A Fish Called Wanda. For drama fans, My Girl. Jamie Lee Curtis has shown wide range ever since 1978. It’s really no wonder that she decided that, in fact, she didn’t really want to be a social worker and dropped out to pursue acting.