PULLING INTO THE DRIVEWAY OF JAMIE LEE Curtis’ house on the west side of Los Angeles, I am met by her dog Runi, a rescue terrier-poodle that bounds down the stairs like an animated ball of fluff, tail wagging.
Curtis is not far behind, striding down to meet me warmly as if we are already old friends. She’s tall and trim, and her gaze is intense—in a good way. Upstairs in her kitchen, she fixes a cappuccino and pours me a tall glass of mint water and we start talking. She brings up her new film Halloween, a new imagining of the granddaddy of the contemporary horror movie, and the book she’s reading about World War I, as well as trauma and healing and the state of America, and soon we’re both getting emotional, and over an hour has passed before I even think to turn my tape recorder on. Everything she says is absolutely sincere—about herself, the world we’re living in and her very long career.
It’s a career that spans four decades of roles in television and film. The original Halloween was the one that made her a star back in 1978. Her performance as Laurie Strode, a teenage babysitter being hunted by the killer Michael Myers, and the string of horror films in which she subsequently starred earned her the title Scream Queen, though she’s also been in a lot of other kinds of movies: the Oscar-nominated heist comedy A Fish Called Wanda and James Cameron’s action thriller True Lies, in which she delivered a now iconic striptease, and Disney’s 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, in which she body-swapped with Lindsay Lohan. Along the way she did many other things too: she wrote 13 children’s books, became an accomplished photographer, got sober and talked openly about it, invented a diaper with a built-in pocket for wipes (seriously) and started a family, marrying the beloved writer-director Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman), with whom she has two children. All of this helped make her an icon, at once outspoken and relatable.
This story is from the November 5,2018 edition of Time.
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This story is from the November 5,2018 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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