In the volatile world of show business, Jamie Lee Curtis describes herself as a "control freak," but the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis knows as well as anyone in this town that a career is made of luck and timing.
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Jamie Lee Curtis answers the door of her Beverly Hills house with a worried look on her face. I'm 15 minutes early and she's not yet ready to deal with me. She needs that extra 15 minutes to get things under control. Husband Christopher Guest hasn't left the house yet to work on his next film; daughter Annie isn't quite ready for her sitter to take her to the park; Jamie hasn't had her muffin and tea. She leads me into the house, tells me to make myself at home, and goes about the business of saying goodbye to her family and giving instructions to the maid. Then she plops herself onto the couch, takes a breath and says with a cracked smile, "Kathleen Turner wouldn't have met you at the door without everything being just right; the baby wouldn't be screaming, there wouldn't be water in the bathroom and your feet wouldn't get wet; there would be a little more control."
Control. It's a favorite word of hers. She uses it frequently, thinks about it often. She's a woman who likes to have things just so in her life, and she usually finds that things are never the way she would like them to be. As she gets older, though, she's becoming more accepting of the fact that, as Yeats once wrote, "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." You'd think she would have known that by now, being a child of two of Hollywood's icons.
Jamie was born November 22, 1958, the second daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. By the time her parents divorced in 1962, Janet Leigh had appeared in 37 movies, including Orson Welles's A Touch of Evil, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. Tony Curtis had changed his name from Bernard Schwartz and had been in 41 films. He was best known for his starring roles in Houdini, Sweet Smell of Success, The Defiant Ones, and Some Like It Hot.
Both parents remarried within the year and Jamie grew up with her mother and new husband, Robert Brandt. She rarely saw her father. In 1970, when Jamie was 12, Tony Curtis was arrested at a London airport for possession of marijuana. Ten years later, Jamie was doing coke with her father. Eventually, both father and daughter would kick the habit.
After spending just three months in college, Jamie quit to become a TV actress. She was cast in a series, "Operation Petticoat," based on her father's film by the same name, that lasted a year, and in 1978 she landed a lead role in John Carpenter's Halloween. Her screams were real enough to get her five more horror films: Prom Night, Terror Train, Road Games, Halloween II, and The Fog (which co-starred her mother). She then appeared on TV in "Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story." In 1983 she made a revealing, psychological film called Love Letters in which she shed her clothes and displayed a memorable body. She showed that body again, for just six seconds, in the Eddie Murphy hit Trading Places, and the second phase of her career was in full gear. Perfect, with John Travolta, was hyped as her breakthrough film, but it failed dismally at the box office. But she came back with a small part in Dominick and Eugene, and then appeared in A Man in Love, Amazing Grace & Chuck, and, finally, in her real breakthrough, A Fish Called Wanda. For HBO, she starred with Bette Davis in As Summers Die. And then she returned to television in a series with comedian Richard Lewis, "Anything But Love." Her latest film, for director Kathryn Bigelow, is a stylized, disturbing cop thriller, Blue Steel.
Lawrence Grobel: Bud Cort told me you were the best kisser in Hollywood.
Jamie Lee Curtis: I'm the best kisser in Hollywood? Me? How would Bud Cort know?
LG: You acted with him in Love Letters.
JLC: Maybe that's a metaphor, maybe there's some hidden meaning there. Bud's a very sweet guy. He was the stripper at my wedding shower.
LG: Bud Cort? A stripper?
JLC: I had a couple of girlfriends throw a shower when I was in England publicizing Trading Places. Bud was there and one of my friends called him up. There was the tea, the presents, and then this guy comes in wearing a leather jacket, glasses--I couldn't figure out who it was at first. It was Bud. He started removing his jacket, his shirt--he didn't take it all off, but it was funny. I can't figure out why he says I'm a good kisser.
LG: He also wanted to know when you're going to get him a part on your TV show.
JLC: Like I'm now a casting director? It's weird to get a show and all of a sudden every actor you know, you see in their eyes, "Maybe we could do something."
LG: Did you ever call in any chips yourself? I mean, Lew Wasserman is your godfather. And you did begin your career at Universal.
JLC: But I never called upon him for a job. My first job was at Universal, under contract. I had this very pushy manager at the time who got me an interview with the head of the talent department there. I did a scene and she decided to hire me. I got $285 a week in the beginning. She didn't know that Wasserman was my godfather. I always felt the need to not go to the people closest to me.
LG: Was that job the reason you dropped out of college?
JLC: My college was my early work. I spent five years basically going to school: I did that TV series, horror movies...I had amazing success very quickly for somebody who was not a beauty, and had no discernible talent. I got that contract with Universal when I was 18 and within six months I had done a pilot for a television series, "Operation Petticoat," which got sold for a year. So my first big gig got me work for a year. And some sort of quasi-TV celebrity status. I did some shows like "Match Game" and "Hollywood Squares." I was eighteen! I knew nothing. Knew fucking fuck all! I was playing a woman who was supposed to be in her 30s. I had all this makeup and hair, but it didn't matter how dressed up I was, I was the "kid." Every day somebody would say, "Hey, kid, come here," and it wasn't because I was Tony Curtis's kid, it wasn't about that. It's just that I was young. The first corporation I formed was Kid Curtis. To this day, I get called "kid" by somebody every day.
LG: John Huston used to call Kathleen Turner "the girl" when they first started shooting Prizzi's Honor. Until she told him "Nobody calls me 'the girl,' Mr. Huston."
JLC: She's one of those women who can come up with great lines. Kathleen Turner represents that perfect haunting woman. She's got that great look, that voice, she's almost from another time. I've never been anybody who's got great timing or lines. I've had some great insults laid on me over the years and I just haven't had the good comebacks.
LG: What are the worst things people have said to you?
JLC: I can't tell you, because if I do they'll become pullquotes from hell.
LG: You seem to have come full circle and you're only 31. You began with a TV series, and you're back doing one now. Any difference?
JLC: Then I just didn't know anything. Now I know a lot. Then I was asking a lot of questions. Now I know the answers.
LG: Your parents were friends with Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis--do you have any memories of them?
JLC: Got to tell you: I have no impressions of those people. I wish I did, I really wish that element of my life was stronger to me, but it's not at all. I don't have any real impressions of Hollywood. I remember Dean Martin a little. Kirk and Ann Douglas, Sammy and May Davis. But I was a little kid, I wouldn't understand that they were bigger-than-life people. And by the time I was old enough to realize they were bigger-than-life, they weren't in my life anymore. I didn't grow up with famous peoples' kids. Carrie Fisher and I weren't best friends. I mean, we now, as adults, have acknowledged our commonality to each other. She acknowledged that if there was anybody who could possibly understand her life it might be me. And I think that that's accurate. And she could probably understand mine on some level. But James Garner's daughter was the most famous person's kid I was close to. She and I were very good friends, in fact.
LG: Do you run into a lot of people today who say they knew you when you were a child?
JLC: I meet many, many people who tell me they know me, that they knew me in high school. And I don't remember them from Adam. A lot of people say they know you, but don't forget, you're the only person that knows who really knows you and that's something that you own. Knowing you is something that you control. You give that as a gift to people. You choose the relationships you choose.
LG: You were only three when your parents divorced. Your mother remarried within six months, your father within a year. Was it traumatic for you at the time?
JLC: I don't know. Annie is three and a half now and if I took her away from Chris--it's shocking how much she loves him. Little girls love their daddies. So to say it was not traumatic for me...Holy shit, I don't know what to think what I must have been like.
LG: You were raised by your mother. How often did you see your father?
JLC: Very rarely. He's a ghost. He's not a father, on any level. He was a stranger to me. I have yet to feel the pain.
LG: How did you feel when he married a 22-year-old model?
JLC: I couldn't care. I don't have any relationship with the guy. He never meant anything to me. Bob [Brandt] has been my dad since I was three years old.
LG: Your mother called you her "little ham" when you were a child.
JLC: I was a little ham. I was a show-off. In high school I was the most likely to steal the show. It was impossible for me not to perform.
LG: Yet you've said that high school was "a f*cking killer."
JLC: Because high school is the first real chance for people to establish themselves, and it's done very early, in ninth or tenth grade. And it becomes very competitive. Puberty is flipping you out and flipping everybody else out. There are very few people that I know now who were achievers in high school. If you were just a kinky kind of girl who wanted a lot of attention and had no discernible talent, except that she did good interviews, it was just not a fun thing. Because it was tremendously competitive. I see that with little children--they're just so mean to each other.
LG: Did you have many friends by the time you went to Choate for your senior year?
JLC: In Choate my dear friend was one of the few Jewish girls in this very preppy Eastern prep school. And an Iranian exchange student named Ali. That was it. I was singled out as much as the Iranian and the Jewish girl. I was the girl from Hollywood.
LG: Did people whisper behind your back and point you out?
JLC: My first day at Choate I was walking with this girl and two guys came up to us and said, "Hey, Jamie Lee Curtis is here. She's Tony Curtis's daughter." I said, "Oh, really? I haven't seen her." "Oh yeah, she's here, and they say she's hot." Stupid.
LG: At the very least, weird--if what you wrote in your high school yearbook was accurate.
JLC: You mean: "Weirdness is a virtue that only some can project successfully. My bosoms aren't big, but they're mine."
LG: Why'd you write that?
JLC: Who fucking knows? It was my way of saying I was lonely, I was within myself, so I was saying only a few of us grand people can be weird.
LG: Were you also afraid? You said somewhere that you spent a long time being afraid.
JLC: I always used to lie in interviews too, because for a time if you don't feel like you have anything to talk about you kind of lie your way through them. I was afraid. Afraid of not being. Of not having a mark, not making a specific contribution. There are so many people who just "be" in this world.
LG: Sounds like you went through an identity crisis.
JLC: A huge identity crisis. Monster identity crisis. Who am I? How can I make a mark? What do I like? What don't I like? A lot of it had to do with growing up in the '70s--a very nonspecific generation. The "Me" generation. We had no goal. My 20s were very hard; very, very hard. And I never thought I'd make 30. I didn't think I was going to live that long. I really think that's why now I'm, like, blossoming.
LG: Was your belief in an early death an obsession from a dream or premonition?
JLC: No. But I was obsessed with it pretty much. This is psychological stuff, but I always connected good happenings with bad happenings. So anything good meant something bad. I've now come to understand that as being life. At the time I took it very personally. I thought it had something to do with me. So I was convinced that anything good meant something horrible was going to happen.
LG: Are you a woman of frequent mood swings?
JLC: Well, I've never been able to live in the middle. I was once diagnosed as having M.S. when I was 20. I had double vision a couple of times and I had a real bad diagnosis. I had a guy who said, "Oh, she's a woman, she's having unexplained neurological problems, bingo! She probably has M.S. and will never be able to live the fullness of life." So what they tell you to do is live life in the middle. There's no way I can do that! Anybody who knows me, I fly full tilt until I totally stop. And once I knew the first guy's diagnosis was bad I didn't pay attention to it.
LG: Did your mother give you any advice on how to make the right contacts?
JLC: Mom has always been supportive and has been a big supporter of her philosophy of the business with me. Very social-- responsibility for being aggressive, going places, to parties, where I might have an opportunity in a more private arena to meet the right people--an old-fashioned kind of hustle.
LG: And did you follow her advice?
JLC: I was a very good schmoozer in my early days. I never slept around, I never abused myself physically like that. But when I was with [agent] Sue Mengers I was often asked to her famous dinner parties as the single girl. If I had a boyfriend at the time Sue would say, "No, don't bring him." And I would go. Now if somebody said that to me I'd say, "Fuck you. Fuck you very much."
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.
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.
LG: To the point where your label changed--from scream queen to...
JLC: ...body girl. That sort of sex symbol ingenue. Because I've got a sensational body, it was a sensation. "Did you see Jamie Lee Curtis's breasts? Oh my God, aren't they beautiful." It's ridiculous. But that was a phase. Maybe now they will pay attention to something else. I don't know.
LG: Let's focus on those breasts for a moment. Before you briefly showed them in Trading Places you were certainly on display in Love Letters.
JLC: That's a whole different thing. Love Letters was a part that I and every actress that I knew was fighting to get. It had to do with a passionate, obsessive, sexual affair with a married man. I auditioned harder and more strenuously and emotionally than I've ever auditioned for anything, and didn't get it originally. But when the girl they hired got another movie they came to me. It was the greatest part that I've ever had emotionally as an actor. That was a really wonderful performance that I gave.
LG: You didn't worry about going too far? Showing too much.
JLC: Baring my breasts? Everybody does it. I don't want to start listing all the actresses that have done nudity in movies, but it's astonishing. I'm singled out because of the physical beauty of my body, period. If I didn't have as sensational a body this part of my career would have gone unmerited.
LG: Although you were on display far longer in Love Letters, it wasn't until Trading Places that people took notice.
JLC: Trading Places was the break-out for me. I was playing a hooker and there was no question that nudity was in the movie. It turned out to be my avenue into a more mainstream audience. But it only took six seconds.
LG: Which you later discovered was being freeze-framed on VCRs.
JLC: That was the first real indication I had that in a modern society you have almost no control about what you do. For somebody to rent a movie that you're in and freeze a frame of it, almost like a still photograph, and keep it on the screen during a party, which this guy told me he had done... all of a sudden I'm a poster! I tried to sue Playboy because they lifted frames of the film and blew them up and made photographs. But there had been two previous attempts by people to sue Playboy and they were both shot down in court. But I was flipped out about it.
LG: Have you sworn off nudity?
JLC: It's not beyond me. But it's become too much attached to me for something that shouldn't be. I've been relatively dainty in exploiting myself as a woman. It happens to be I have a great body and that became the cause celebre. It was a hindrance because no matter what character I was playing, all of a sudden it became "Jamie Lee Curtis's body." It's not the character's body. So my feeling has been that it now interrupts the process. You are now stopped by it and go, "Oh, there are Jamie's breasts." And it's also due to my husband. I don't think he would like that. Therefore I won't do it.
LG: Before we get to your marriage, let's stick with your movies. You began having some severe doubts after you saw Grandview, U.S.A., didn't you?
JLC: That was a real bad movie. I was so sad after that I really had thought about not doing it anymore. And then I saw Silkwood. Meryl Streep has been consistently the creative force that's kept me going. It's not like this idol worship where I've got a little shrine and I'm going to name my daughter Meryl. But every time I begin to wonder if there is going to be a creative experience out there for me, I go see one of her movies and it sparks me to keep going. Because I see there are people making wonderful movies and I'll have an opportunity at some point. Silkwood was that; then Plenty, which is the perfect movie; then A Cry in the Dark, which was astonishing. She's my favorite; she can do anything. I've actually written her fan letters.
LG: What do you think of De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman?
JLC: I like those guys, but I don't love them. The tortured actor syndrome isn't interesting to me.
LG: Nicholson?
JLC: Never, never.
LG: You acted with Bette Davis in a cable movie, As Summers Die. What did you get from her?
JLC: I saw an example of someone who is not a nice person. She was part of that Hollywood squeaky wheel syndrome. The squeaky wheel gets greased; the smooth running wheel you just take advantage of it and then you throw it away. She got greased all the time. I admired her tenacity and also thought she was silly.
LG: Did you get to know her?
JLC: I lived in the same building with her and I was president of the homeowner's association. She would call me "neighbor." Or she'd call and say, "Hello, it's Bette, when are we turning on the heat?"
LG: You were to have turned on the heat in Perfect, which fizzled. That screwed you up for a while, didn't it?
JLC: Because I bought into the hype. I'm usually the doomsday kid, the black cloud. I'm the person who will not buy into "this is going to get nominations." But with Perfect I allowed myself the fantasy of what it could mean if it was a tremendous success. I allowed myself that little bit of hope. And it just died. It made me very sad because I allowed it. I thought maybe this will be mine, this will give me the entree into better films, better directors.
LG: And then along came A Fish Called Wanda.
JLC: What was wild about Wanda was that I had no delusions about it, no expectations. I expected it to do nada. But what a great experience--that movie has been a real feather.
LG: Was it all John Cleese's vision?
JLC: We all participated quite a bit in that movie. My voice was heard more that it's ever been heard. Cleese was a very good partner for me. He wanted everything I had to give him. And knew how to say to me, "Shut up." He'd come up and tweak my ear, which meant turn the channel. I long for a partner like that, who knows when to say, "Jamie, shut up."
LG: Did you get that with Kathryn Bigelow while making Blue Steel?
JLC: I didn't have any confidence in Kathryn when we were making it. It was a very difficult movie, a departure for me. She had a very specific vision. It's very hard for me to buy into somebody else's vision because I have such strong opinions and I didn't really trust her all that much. I was quite apprehensive about what this film was going to be until I saw it. There are still dramatic problems that bother me, but on the whole I should be smacked about the face and head for not trusting her. I didn't know what we had, I had no idea. I wish I had gone to dailies; I wish I had joined her instead of fought her. It's not that we battled, but I fought her. I felt very restricted by what her process was. She was just very workman-like about it, which is a testimony to the actor she chose. But I felt tied up like a calf getting branded in Blue Steel. In a tight close-up film like that, your tools as an actor are reduced, you don't get body language, you are stuck in the big close-up which means you can't do a lot with your face. You almost have to do nothing and yet you have to give a performance. I felt very challenged by that.
LG: And now are people telling you how good you are in it?
JLC: I ran into somebody who said it was the best thing I've ever done. Every time I do something it's the best thing I've ever done. People always make those qualitative judgments, which piss me off. They're telling you that you haven't been that good before. "Oh, you look really pretty today." Well, what about yesterday? It's, like, fuck you! Just let it be what it is.
LG: What's been the most painful experience in this business for you?
JLC: Not being accepted. Yet it's probably going to be my triumph because it will have forced me to continue trying, searching out my own worth, my own depth. I've never been protected by anybody. I've had to take care of myself. It makes you stronger. I've certainly climbed the ladder. I've put in my time. I'm going to earn it all by myself.
LG: You certainly sound like you have a need for control not only over your life but of whoever comes in contact with you.
JLC: I'm a control freak. I don't want total control; all I want is the ability to voice my choices, my ideas. I haven't had tremendous confidence in the group of people that I was with. I definitely want to get myself into a place where I'm surrounded by people I trust, so that I can let go. I've learned to be wary. And Christopher by nature is very careful.
LG: Did you learn to be cautious because of past relationships.
JLC: I've been in relationships--not with Christopher--where I was coming up with a lot of money. And when I got married I was a total naive little romantic. I really bought into the oneness theory of marriage. From the minute we married I gave up my name, went to Guest. We had one checking account, we merged our corporations. When I earn money or when he earns money we both know that it's our money. I wanted that oneness. It was my very, very important need to be really joined with him.
LG: Does Christopher make you laugh?
JLC: He's not a comedy guy around the house, but he can make me laugh a hundred ways. I married my personal comedy sensibility. That satire that my husband and his friends are all so good at is something that I find very funny. I really appreciate my husband.
LG: Speaking of laughs, what's harder for you, comedy or drama?
JLC: Comedy. Drama is more selfish, easier, because you get to delve and dwell on your emotional capabilities. That's an easier crutch than comedy, which is a little more frightening.
LG: You've been married five years now, your adopted daughter is almost four, you're in a successful TV series, you've got a new movie out. Have you finally got it all?
JLC: No. You know what I'm trying for? I'm trying to find where in my life I am most comfortable, so that I can now go off and use my brain. I love to make households, I like that part of being a woman and being married and being a mother. But I want to get past it now. I've not been embraced by a creative group that I would love to be validated by, by being included like a lot of my contemporaries have. Being an actor gave me a mark. It's a painful job. I think we all have this desperate need to perform. If I was not a successful actor, who knows if I'd still be around?
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Lawrence Grobel is the author of The Hustons and Conversations with Capote and writes for Playboy, The New York Times and Redbook.