Jamie Lee Curtis Reveals Her Plastic Surgery Disaster
Jamie Lee Curtis describes her history with plastic surgery.
This article is more than 2 years old
After making her film debut in Halloween as Laurie Strode, a babysitter who goes up against masked murderer Michael Myers, Jamie Lee Curtis has shown a lot of range throughout her career. She’s starred in family-friendly movies like Disney’s Freaky Friday, played Chris Evans’s mom in Knives Out, and consistently proves she’s the OG scream queen by returning to the Halloween franchise.
Jamie Lee Curtis is also somewhat of an open book when it comes to talking about her personal life. So it’s not that surprising that the actress has discussed the impact of plastic surgery on her career. On an episode of the PEOPLE in the ’90s podcast the 62-year-old discussed what it was like to see her parents, screen legends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, grow old in Hollywood which prepared her for the harsh reality of aging in the industry.
“I’m the child of movie stars. I watched my parents get facelifts and neck lifts,” Jamie Lee Curtis told podcast hosts Jason Sheeler and Andrea Lavinthal. “I watched their work diminish. I watched their fame not diminish. And the contradiction of a lot of fame, but not a lot of work, is really hard to navigate for people. Very hard to be famous but not be doing the thing that made you famous. And that for the rest of your life, you’re famous for something you did a long time ago, and you chase that attention.”
“I’ve been doing this for a long, long time, and I’ve been successful at it since I was nineteen. There’s not a day I don’t walk down the street and somebody goes, ‘Hey, I love you. You’re fantastic.’ And I appreciate it,” Jamie Lee Curtis added. She went on to explain that she was shown the same love before and after altering her appearance.
Golden Globe winner Jamie Lee Curtis also told listeners about a traumatic moment on set that caused her to succumb to plastic surgery and the dark turn her life took after that. “Ten years ago, before anybody did that, I had fat taken from underneath my eyes because I was on a movie and I was puffy. And I can remember the cameraman saying, ‘I can’t shoot her.’ I remember being mortified.”
While filming 1985’s Perfect opposite John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis was shamed for her appearance again. This led to her getting all sorts of work done to meet Hollywood’s standard of beauty. “I’ve had a little lipo[suction], I’ve had a little Botox. And you know what? None of it works. There’s this illusion that once you do it then you’ll be fine. And that’s just horse****. I looked worse. Worse.”
Always candid, Jamie Lee Curtis also spoke about her Vicodin addiction which was a result of needing pain mediation after numerous surgeries. When approached to be on the cover of More Magazine, she made them a deal.
“I knew I was going to do the cover of More. I said, here’s the deal: I will take a picture in my underwear, with no makeup, no hair, no fancy lights, with my body the way it is, if you promise you will print that, head to toe, on a separate page, and then print the picture of me fully glammed-out on the next page. That was my deal with them, to talk about the reality of self-esteem, and about the fact that I had undergone plastic surgery, which is where I first found Vicodin.”
But the story does have a happy ending. In February 2020, Jamie Lee Curtis celebrated the 21st anniversary of her sobriety, after getting clean in 1999. While her scary experience with plastic surgery and addiction are have impacted her movie career, Curtis hopes that her honesty will help people who are dealing with the same issues.
On the movie side of things, Jamie Lee Curtis is all set to reprise her role as Laurie Strode in Halloween Kills. Directed by David Gordon Green from a script he co-wrote with Danny McBride and Scott Teems, the film is a sequel to 2018’s Halloween and the twelfth installment in the Halloween franchise.
The story continues on the night of October 31, 2018, with Laurie Strode and her family working with new and old allies to form a mob against Michael Myers who is still loose in Haddonfield.
Starring alongside Jamie Lee Curtis is Nick Castle as Michael Myers, with James Jude Courtney also portraying Myers. Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, and Charles Cyphers reprise their roles from the 2018 and 1978 films. Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Longstreet also join the cast.
Halloween Kills is scheduled for release on October 15, 2021.
