JAMIE LEE CURTIS - Hollywood's Halloween QUEEN

THE ACTRESS RETURNS AGAIN TO THE FRANCHISE THAT KICKSTARTED HER STORIED CAREER

- Sara Tapia

Having kicked off her career in 1978’s Halloween, the frightening film that spawned not only an iconic franchise but a generation of slasher movies, it’s more than a little ironic that Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t a fan of the genre. “I don’t like horror films,” she previously divulged to The New Yorker. “I scare easily – I have since I was a child. Loud noises scare me, suspense music scares me.”

Despite it being her first film, the role of Laurie Strode – the babysitter hunted by the mask-wearing killer Michael Myers – was seemingly made for the star. But Curtis, 62, has admitted her mother’s iconic shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho some 18 years earlier was what landed her the part. “I’m sure the fact that I was [Hollywood stars] Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis’ daughter, and that my mother had been in Psycho – if you’re going to choose between this one and this one, choose the one whose mother was in Psycho, because it will get some press for you,” she explained to The New Yorker. “I’m never going to pretend that I just got that on my own, like I’m just a little girl from nowhere getting it. Clearly, I had a leg up.”

Created on a meagre budget, Halloween quickly became a word-of-mouth hit – with Curtis unaware of how big an impact the film was set to have on her own career. “Halloween was never meant to become a franchise until it became one. Nobody involved knew it would amount to anything worthwhile,” the actor recently told Vogue. “And here I am, 43 years later, still playing Laurie Strode.”