Jamie Lee Curtis revealed that she has been planning her retirement from Hollywood for decades, hoping to avoid the same fate as her famous parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis.
The Freakier Friday star opened up to The Guardian about the fickle nature of fame, and her process of “self-retiring” that she has been employing for three decades.
End of an era
“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,” Jamie Lee told the publication.
“I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that’s very painful.”
The actress added that she had 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.”
© Getty ImagesJamie Lee’s mother Janet was an acclaimed actress best known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, while her father Tony was a star who appeared in films like Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe.
Jamie Lee entered the acting world herself at 19 years old, and has been steadily working for over 40 years, even earning an Oscar in 2023 for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Power play
© Getty Images for CinemaConDespite this sentiment, the 66-year-old has a full schedule of upcoming films and is feeling like “a boss” in her career.
She garnered acclaim with her portrayal of an alcoholic in The Bear in recent years, and revealed to The Guardian that it allowed her to release emotions that she didn’t know existed within her.
“Here’s what’s traumatic: not being able to express your range as an artist. That’s traumatic,” she said. “To spend your entire public life holding back range. And depth. And complexity. And contradiction. And rage. And pain. And sorrow.”
© Getty Images for FX Networks“And to have been limited to a much smaller palette of creative, emotional work,” the mother of two added.
“For me, [The Bear] was an unleashing of 50 years of being a performer who was never considered to have any range. And so the freedom, and the confidence, that I was given by Chris [Storer, the show’s creator], and the writing, which leads you…everywhere you need to go — it was exhilarating.”
“It took no toll. The toll has been 40 years of holding back something I know is here,” she concluded.
In defense of nepo babies
© Getty ImagesJamie Lee has been outspoken about the backlash that celebrity children, known as nepo babies, have received in recent years, and took to Instagram to highlight her own story.
“I’ve never understood, nor will I, what qualities got me hired that day, but since my first two lines on Quincy as a contract player at Universal Studios to this last spectacular creative year some 44 years later, there’s not a day in my professional life that goes by without my being reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars,” she captioned the passionate post in 2022.
She added that the conversation around nepo babies was designed to “diminish and denigrate and hurt”.
To see Jamie Lee’s incredible Oscars win, watch below…
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