Jamie Lee Curtis’ life would look a lot different, both in Hollywood and at home, if it weren’t for the “Halloween” franchise, she said in an essay written for People ahead of this week’s release of the 13th and final installment, “Halloween Ends.”
“I am trying to figure out how to say goodbye to Laurie, who has taught me the meaning of the words ‘resilience,’ ‘loyalty,’ ‘perseverance’ and ‘COURAGE.’ I also need to say thank you,” wrote Curtis, 63, who has played Laurie Strode since the initial “Halloween” in 1978. “Everything good in my life can be traced back to Laurie. I was with the writer of the original ‘Halloween’ when I saw my husband of 37 years for the first time.”
Curtis recalled in 1984 when she was with the late Debra Hill — who co-wrote the iconic horror flick with director, then-boyfriend John Carpenter, and whose hometown of Haddonfield, N.J., served as the inspiration for the name of the all-but cursed town in “Halloween” — and saw writer-director Guest in Rolling Stone in a story about his then-new mockumentary, “This is Spinal Tap.”
“I’m gonna marry that guy,” Curtis recalled saying at the time.
As she wrote in the essay, she did marry Guest, six months later.
Curtis said she continues “connecting the dots,” and how “Halloween” eventually led her to meeting her “Trading Places” director John Landis, which in turn would lead to “A Fish Called Wanda” and so on.
“Today, the fantastically creative life I get to have — I’m a director, producer; I run a company named Comet Pictures; I produce podcasts — and all the wonderful films I’ve done recently (’Knives Out,’ ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’), all of it is because of Laurie,” said Curtis.
She noted that Jake Gyllenhaal, who is her godson, was responsible for introducing her to David Gordon Green — who’s helmed the trilogy of new “Halloween” films, which started with 2018′s direct sequel to the original, and includes last year’s “Halloween Kills.”
Green, she noted, created a family for Laurie — “a broken and bruised one but a family nonetheless. ... The final three movies became a trilogy, films about female trauma and empowerment. Dots connected AGAIN!”
Pointing to Laurie’s “intelligence and strength of character, quick mind and profound bravery,” Curtis said she has long attempted “to inculcate those aspects of Laurie’s character into my own, to carry that mantle and represent survivors of all types.”
Curtis — daughter of late actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh — last year told The New York Daily News, as she wrote in the new essay, that she is “not an intellectual about horror films,” despite her own legacy. That includes starring in films like “Prom Night” and “The Fog.”
“I don’t study them. I don’t like them. I haven’t watched any of them. I couldn’t name any of them,” Curtis told The News while promoting “Halloween Kills.”
