Jamie Lee Curtis: Controlled Substance

LG: Who were some of the people you met at her dinners?

JLC: Barry Diller was one. Chris Walken. I do a great Chris Walken imitation from that. He sat next to me and he went, "So, ah, you an actress?" "Yeah." "Ah, so you a client of Sue's?" "Yeah." "Oh, that's nice." That was it. I don't think Sue wanted me to pair up with these people and go home with them. I wasn't a slut, I was a client. But I was pretty and I was single. Nobody ever really came on to me because I wasn't come-on-able. I didn't operate that way, never have. I never participated in the sort of liaison dangereuse of Hollywood. I just never thought it was appropriate for me.

LG: For a while, though, you did partake of drugs and partying, especially in the early '80s.

JLC: It was a weird time.

LG: Wasn't it when you first became friends with Melanie Griffith and Kathleen Quinlan?

JLC: The three of us met when we did that weird TV movie together called "She's in the Army Now." It was about three women and how they kept in contact, the ebbs and flows of friendships. Kathleen, who was more famous than us at the time, was like a lunatic. She would get up at four in the morning and we had to be on location at 5:30. Most of the time Melanie and I would be recovering from the night before, from smoking, drinking, doing coke. I was almost about to get married, but I wasn't happy. Kathleen was very much trying to protect Melanie and me.

LG: Succeeding at all?

JLC: No.

LG: Did you manage to corrupt her?

JLC: We corrupted each other. I'm such a control freak that I was the kind of drug addict who would do my last hit of cocaine at one in the morning, I would never allow myself to go past. I would do it from six at night, but I wouldn't allow myself to stay up past 2:30 a.m.

LG: How many years were you into coke?

JLC: About three. But I was able to stop. It wasn't something where I had to institutionalize myself. It was a real sad time. We were all professional people whose work was our lives, and our personal lives weren't important to us. When I was doing it there were a lot of homosexuals, a lot of single people. It was just that sort of early-to-middle '80s when it was just a lost time. We spent so many, many nights with each other talking about nothing, doing nothing, snorting a lot of coke. I look back on it as sort of fun when it first started, but I had a half mind.

LG: Have you kept in contact with Kathleen and Melanie?

JLC: Our friendship really ebbed and flowed in an interesting way. There was a time when Melanie was married [to Steve "Rocky" Bauer] and both Kathleen and I were single. Melanie was very conscientious and was really working hard. She had moved to New York with Rocky and they were both studying and working in the theater. Kathleen and I were still out here. Then there was a time when Kathleen was with Al [Pacino] and Melanie wasn't with Rocky. It was just such a strange jumbling up. I didn't know Kathleen when they were together, but I saw her a few times when she was with Al and she changed so much. She looked very pale and drawn. And now everybody's career is doing well. Melanie's gone through this huge blossoming both personally and professionally.

LG: Did you and Melanie ever compare Hitchcock stories? She often talks about how lecherous he was when her mother, Tippi Hedren, was in The Birds and Marnie. Did your mother suffer any indignities when she was in Psycho?

JLC: No, I don't think so. She was more of an established woman at that time. I think with Tippi, Hitchcock really brought her into the limelight.

LG: Do you feel your mother never got a fair shake--that she wasn't taken seriously as an actress, even though she appeared in Psycho, A Touch of Evil, and The Manchurian Candidate?

JLC: I believe that neither she nor my father, because they were so beautiful, were really given much credit for their performances. I've never really seen their films for what they are worth. I've seen them because I felt I should. But she's really great in A Touch of Evil. And my dad in Sweet Smell of Success gave an astonishing performance, it was a really brave thing for him to do. Now all the stars from my parents' era are getting these accolades and I really wonder why neither one of them has been singled out for their contributions, and for their continuing elegance. The only thing I can put my finger on is that because they were so beautiful, it's their talent that came second.

LG: Have they been hurt by that?

JLC: I'm sure. It would hurt me. Because this is your life's work. I once said something about my mom when I presented her with an award from the National Film Society--I talked about how people I'd worked with always said that she's the nicest person that they've ever known. She is the only person in Hollywood about whom nobody has anything bad to say. She loved the speech but one comment she did make after was, "Yeah, but do they have anything good to say about me?" And I've fallen into that a little myself. I have a lot of fun in my work, but don't want to be known as just this nice person.

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