Jamie Lee Curtis: Controlled Substance

LG: When you were a child did you think about what your parents did, and did you fantasize doing it yourself?

JLC: To be honest I never had paid that much attention to their careers. I didn't grow up in a movie house being seduced by the big screen and that yearning in my heart saying, "That's what I want." The magic of the movies never affected me, never fueled my fire so to speak. It was my family's business.

LG: If you were to give a speech about your father, what would you say about him?

JLC: That he's somebody nobody knew. They probably all thought they did. As he developed as a person he realized more and more how you don't succumb to what they want you to be, and if what they want you to be isn't what you want, then fuck 'em. I heard he got real difficult in negotiations. He was a wonderful businessman for a while, before he got into drugs. I'm a lousy business person. But he just got tired of the machine, the politics, and wanted to be his own person. And he really has developed himself into being Tony Curtis. My dad has always had a great sense of style and flair--he's always been the guy with the leather driving gloves and velvet jackets. I wish he could let more people know him, but I don't know if that's possible. I think he will become more and more a guy from the Bronx. The panache and the glaze of it all will have faded, as it does for everybody. He's gotten very involved with his roots. He's gone back to Budapest and started a foundation to raise funds to resurrect and refurbish old synagogues throughout Hungary that were destroyed in the war.

LG: So Tony Curtis will return to Bernard Schwartz?

JLC: I think so. What's interesting to me about past Hollywood people is how much they become caricatures in their personal lives of what they are professionally. And not even such old stars. I don't want to get into who they are, but even some women in their 50s who 10 years ago were our biggest stars--they are already becoming caricatures of what we responded to in them. It's so scary to me, it's terrifying. You want to not fall into that. That's why great actors don't allow that to happen, because they are constantly inventing new people.

LG: In 1970, when you were 12, your father was busted for marijuana in London. What effect did it have on you?

JLC: Only that at school they used to joke me with a stupid poem: "Your father's Tony Curtis and your mother's Janet Leigh. Your father just got busted and your mother is free." They would tease me with it, but it wasn't some horrible thing where I'd be crying.

LG: You're outspoken about sharing drugs with your father in your 20s. How did that happen?

JLC: It was something that both he and I acknowledged. When he was doing drugs I also was doing drugs, so we'd go over to his house and have drugs. It was that simple. And it was that sick. It was that whorish. All the people we hung out with did coke. We'd do coke with anybody if they had it. Didn't matter who the person was.

LG: Did you ever have any serious conversations with him then?

JLC: Nah. Because those conversations are drug conversations, they don't mean anything. Those were some very sad times for me. Because I didn't live with him, it didn't affect me like I'm sure it must many people whose fathers live at home. I just always knew he was doing drugs and I would pop in and out. When he went to the Betty Ford Clinic at one point we did a family intervention, but it didn't work.

LG: What was that like?

JLC: If they realize the person is not staying sober they bring the family and friends in and confront him. He makes a declaration in front of all the people that love him. But he had no relationship with anybody, so it didn't matter. He made this big declaration and we all cried. And that day I found more coke in his hotel room.

LG: Did you confront him?

JLC: Oh sure. Tears. He went back. Didn't matter. But he's clean now. He did it himself. Ultimately you clean up yourself.

LG: Your mother wrote in her book that your older sister, Kelly, is more intellectual and you're more of a hip-shooter. Is that accurate?

JLC: My sister is a very alive person, more than I am. Is she smarter than me? No. I think my mother means that my sister is very much in her head when she's making a decision and I'm not in mine at all. I'm in the heart. Any decision I've made, every single one, was made with an instinctual immediate response to something. My marriage, my personal taste, my liking in literature, it's always an immediate boom! decision. I don't think as an actor, either. I'm not a method, thought-processing actor. I'm instinctual. I'm not a technical actor, so whatever personal technique I have is sort of washed away because it just looks real easy and very natural. When you are a natural actor nobody gives you any credit. And I work very hard to make anybody I'm playing real.

LG: You mean it hasn't been all that easy for you?

JLC: I don't like perpetuating the myth that most people assume about celebrities. It's insidious because it stops people from believing that you're real. And I very much want people to know that I'm real. I hurt and I cry and I have problems and I've survived them. And I've had great joys. But to perpetuate this myth that I was just this perfectly beautiful 18-year-old girl--it's taken me 11 years to get myself feeling good about myself. It's been a personal burden that I've always had potential. But I wasn't the kind of actor who was going to win an Oscar on my first performance. I wasn't going to work with De Niro. There are people who have careers built on their first job. I didn't get to work with Peter Weir when I first started. My first feature wasn't with Meryl Streep.

LG: Yeah, but you got to scream a lot your first time out.

JLC: I was scream queen! But I'm not going to complain. At that time there were no other options. I was 19 and was making horror films. But I never had to do something I was ashamed of. In my early work, I was always holding up the morals of the young women of America. I was a smart girl, I never played the bimbo, the slut. I was never in The Swamp Thing VIII getting fucked by a beast from the swamp. I never had to sacrifice my own integrity. I was truly lucky that Halloween was a big success--a big success! And those films gave me a chance to learn about acting. It allowed me to forget about film, about a camera. It also taught me what the camera can do--what to know, what to look for.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5