By age 19, Jamie Lee Curtis was already questioning whether or not she’d made the suitable transfer by pursuing an appearing profession.
The youthful daughter of Tony Curtis, star of traditional movies like Some Like It Hot (1959), and Janet Leigh, a number one woman greatest recognized for the bathe scene of Psycho (1960), Jamie Lee Curtis dropped out of the University of the Pacific to make her mark on the business.
An element in “Operation Petticoat” (1977-78), an episodic TV remake of her father’s 1959 film, had turned out to be a false begin. She barely received in a single talking line per episode earlier than being dismissed, together with most of her castmates, on the finish of its disappointing first season.
A lifeline emerged with the chance to audition for a movie referred to as Halloween in early 1978, although there was no assure that this might resuscitate her fledgling profession. After all, this was a low-budget horror flick a few psychopath who stalks a gaggle of babysitters, hardly the form of manufacturing that induced critics to swoon. And its younger director, who was scrambling to get his profession off the bottom, initially did not even need her for the position.
Janet Leigh from the 1960 movie ‘Psycho’ and Jamie Lee Curtis from the 1978 horror movie ‘Halloween.’
‘Halloween’ co-writer Debra Hill was impressed by Curtis
As she recalled within the behind-the-scenes documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest, Curtis was initially drawn to the potential for main display screen time advised by the script: “All I kept seeing was my name–the character’s name–on every page, so I knew it was a big part.”
Here was the possibility to deliver to life the character of Laurie Strode, the mild-mannered 17-year-old who rises to the duty of tangling with cold-blooded assassin Michael Myers, even when it posed a problem to her still-developing appearing abilities.
“I was very much a smart aleck and was a cheerleader in high school,” she notes within the documentary. “So I felt very concerned that I was being considered for the really quiet, repressed young woman.”
According to the Halloween Unmasked podcast, Curtis first auditioned for Debra Hill, the movie’s co-writer and producer. Hill had Curtis learn a scene during which Laurie talks on the telephone to gauge how she got here throughout because the shy, girl-next-door kind, a efficiency the younger actress nailed.
“Jamie Lee Curtis was the perfect Laurie Strode,” Hill says in A Cut Above the Rest. “She had vulnerable qualities, and she just was wonderful in her audition.”
The drawback now was getting Halloween co-writer and director, John Carpenter, to see issues her manner.
Director John Carpenter most popular one other younger actress
American director and screenwriter John Carpenter on the set of ‘Halloween.’
Heading into the undertaking, Carpenter had his eye on Anne Lockhart for the position of Laurie.
Lockhart additionally had a well-known actress mom–June Lockhart had starred within the TV exhibits “Lassie” and “Lost in Space”–and, in contrast to Curtis, she had already compiled a reasonably sizeable checklist of display screen credit.
Yet, whether or not as a result of alleged scheduling conflicts or another excuse, Lockhart handed on the provide. Carpenter subsequently took an extended take a look at Curtis and agreed to take an opportunity on the unproven 19-year-old.
There was one different issue that tipped the dimensions in Curtis’ favor: With her familial ties to Leigh, producers noticed a possibility to attach their undertaking, which couldn’t reel in main stars as a result of a meager $300,000 price range, to the long-lasting imagery of Psycho.
“We hired Jamie Lee for that reason,” admits Executive Producer Irwin Yablans in A Cut Above the Rest, earlier than including that Curtis “would have been the best choice anyway; she turned out to be a fine actress.”
The star nervous she could be fired after the primary day
Even with the half in hand, it took a while for Curtis to recover from the insecurity about headlining her first movie.
Following a protracted first day of capturing, which ended along with her considerably awkward effort to improvise the lyrics to a fictional music, Curtis was again at her residence when the telephone rang. It was Carpenter, who wished to speak to her.
Fearing she was about to be fired, Curtis reluctantly took the telephone, solely to be shocked by her director’s soothing phrases: “Hey, darling, I just want to tell you, you were fantastic today.”
Curtis not solely survived the whole thing of the harried shoot, however she in the end vindicated the filmmakers’ option to make her the unlikely star when Halloween went on to gross $47 million over the course of its preliminary theatrical run, making it one of the vital worthwhile films in historical past based mostly on preliminary funding.
Jamie Lee Curtis on the set of ‘Halloween,’ written and directed by John Carpenter.
Curtis struggled with typecasting, however ultimately embraced ‘scream queen’ standing
Despite the success of her characteristic movie debut, Curtis discovered herself again at sq. one, with few job gives, in its aftermath.
She wound up in Carpenter’s follow-up horror movie The Fog (1980), resulting in related elements in related scare flicks like Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980) and naturally, Halloween II (1982). She lastly broke out of the “scream queen” mildew with a high-profile position within the comedy Trading Places (1983), paving the best way for recognition in mainstream fare like A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and True Lies (1994).
Meanwhile, a humorous factor occurred on the best way to A-list stardom: Halloween grew to become referred to as a defining entry within the horror style, and Curtis returned to the franchise for Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)–which included an look from her mom–and Halloween: Resurrection (2002).
The following decade, after a wink at her roots along with her contributions to the TV slasher satire “Scream Queens” (2015-16), Curtis signed on for an additional prolonged flip in Strode’s sneakers with Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022).
Nearly a half-century after her big-screen introduction as a terrified babysitter, Curtis was nonetheless relishing the position of the final word Michael Myers foil, and she or he wouldn’t have it some other manner. After all, as she told Parade in 2018, “Every good thing that ever happened to me was because I was in horror films.”
