One of Hollywood’s greatest and most iconic scream queens (and final girls) might be ready to turn her back on the movie business, if only so the movie business doesn’t turn its back on her first. Halloween’s Jamie Lee Curtis recently said as much to The Guardian, revealing that she has been “self-retiring” for the last three decades. Curtis also added that she “wants to leave the party” before she’s “no longer invited.”
Of course, Curtis doesn’t mean that she’s done with movies right now and will never appear in another movie—despite finally helping to kill off her longtime tormentor Michael Myers in the divisive Halloween Ends. For one thing, she has a new movie coming out on August 8: the legacy sequel Freakier Friday, in which she reunites with co-star Lindsay Lohan from 2003’s Freaky Friday. Like the previous movie, which was already Disney’s third adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ original novel, this one will be a body-swap comedy where mothers and daughters learn to appreciate each other better (but with even more body-swapping than normal).
Why Is Jamie Lee Curtis Planning To Retire?
In the interview, Curtis explained that she saw what happened to her famous parents, original scream queen Janet Leigh (who starred in Psycho) and ’50s heartthrob Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot) when they started to get older. She said they started to “lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their life and their livelihood” when they hit a “certain age,” and it was “very painful” to see them “reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone.” So, to avoid going through that herself, Curtis says she’s been “prepping to get out” for 30 years.
Still, Curtis shouldn’t be too pessimistic about her Hollywood career. Not only does Freakier Friday have some buzz (the original Curtis/Lohan movie is rising the charts on Disney+), but her Halloween legacy sequels with director David Gordon Green were big hits (even the aforementioned Ends, which some were disappointed by, managed to cross $100 million). She also won an Academy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role in Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2023.
So Curtis may be wary of the eventual day when Hollywood is sick of her, but she’s been working in show business for almost 50 years and people still like to see her show up. She wants to leave the party before she’s no longer invited, but it doesn’t seem like that has happened yet. Besides, there are a handful of legacy sequels she could still do. Maybe True Lies?
via Collider