Jamie Lee Curtis and her legendary mom, the late Janet Leigh, both made their names in Hollywood with roles as Scream Queens, in 1978's Halloween and 1960's Psycho, respectively. Some might assume their common interests in acting, similar career paths, and shared genes would result in a picture-perfect relationship between mother and daughter. Although their relationship wasn't quite as fraught as the one between Curtis and her father, Tony Curtis, it certainly had its less-than-stellar moments.
Through years of turmoil, happiness, and calm, Curtis and her mother shared moments together that shaped both of their lives forever, leaving lasting marks on the people they became personally and professionally.
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- Don Ornitz
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Janet Leigh Had Trouble With Jamie Lee Curtis’s 2002 Body Positive Article 'True Thighs'
Janet Leigh worked in Hollywood during a time when an actress's face and body were her primary tools for staying in the business. Leigh took her figure very seriously, returning to a slim 20-inch waist quickly after both of her pregnancies. When age began to change her body in irreversible ways, Leigh became upset.
Jamie Lee Curtis, on the other hand, has embraced her changing shape as she ages, pushing away her one-time nickname of The Body and reveling in her new curves. In 2002, she posed for the cover of More magazine at age 43 in her underwear, without any makeup, help from stylists, or photography tricks. An accompanying article was titled "True Thighs."
In 2010, for another story in More, Curtis said she made the bold move to push back not only against societal norms, but also her mother's fixations:
Our dissatisfaction with what we look like has reached epidemic proportions. Just look around you: People don’t look right. Lips, eyes, hair, weaves, implants. It is a freak show being fed by the business it generates, a modern-day Surgical Industrial Complex. I’m sure my appearing without the usual styling and makeup tricks in this magazine, in the 2002 article I titled "True Thighs," was my... way of saving myself from the same fate. By acknowledging my own changing body, I rebelled against my mother’s fear of it. I know the article and the attention it got were difficult for her.
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- Featureflash Photo Agency
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Leigh Joined Curtis To Celebrate Her Hollywood Walk Of Fame Star In '98
Through the ups and downs of their mother-daughter relationship, Curtis and Leigh always showed up for each other during career highs.
When Curtis received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1998, her husband, Christopher Guest, daughter Annie, and Leigh were by her side.
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- Lawrence Schiller
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- Public Domain
Curtis Said Leigh Was Always There For Her, But There Was No Intimacy In Their Relationship
Born on November 22, 1958, to famous parents Leigh and actor Tony Curtis, Curtis calls herself a "save-the-marriage baby" that failed. Her parents split in 1962 and her father became distant as he moved through several new wives over the course of his life. Curtis stayed with her mother and gained a new father in Leigh's new husband Robert Brandt.
While her relationship with her father was rocky and on-and-off for decades, she remained close to, yet distant, from her mother. Curtis told More magazine:
She took good care of me, my needs were always met and she showed up to everything, but there was no real intimacy. I think it was a generational issue as much as one of her own making, for many people my age have expressed a lack of connection with their parents.
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Leigh Makes A Cameo In ‘Halloween H20’
In 1998, screenwriter Kevin Williamson teamed up with Curtis to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the film that made her a Scream Queen: Halloween.
Called Halloween: H20, the new film catches up with a grown Laurie Strode (Curtis), who works as the headmistress of a boarding school. Strode has a new name and a teenage son, but still suffers from the distress she endured at the hands of Michael Myers 20 years earlier. When Myers breaks free again and heads to the school to confront Strode, she has to gather her strength to fight back.
The film not only celebrated Curtis's big break in Hollywood, but also allowed mother and daughter to work together. Leigh took a small role as a secretary in the film, even paying homage to her Psycho role by driving the same car Marion Crane had in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film.
Curtis spoke to the Los Angeles Times about working with her mom on the film: "Two women, iconographically recognized in this genre, who happen to be mother and daughter - it was completely delicious."
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Curtis Re-Created Leigh’s Infamous ‘Psycho’ Shower Scene For ‘Scream Queens’ In 2015
In 2015, Curtis took a role in Scream Queens, a television series from Ryan Murphy that follows sorority sisters as someone stalks them and their friends. Curtis plays Cathy Munsch, the dean of the college where the events occur. In one episode, the Red Devil antagonist enters Munsch's apartment and surprises her in the shower. In an homage to Curtis's mother Leigh, the scene is a re-creation of the classic Psycho shower moment.
Curtis insisted on the re-creation being as close as possible to her mother's performance, keeping postcards bearing her mother's screaming face on hand during filming and using screenshots to perfect angles.
When speaking with the hosts of Today in 2015, Curtis shared why she decided to re-create the iconic scene for Scream Queens:
I said for this show, at this moment, my mom has been gone long enough now. I'm rooted on my own feet; I think we can now do it.
Curtis Followed Her Mother Back East After Leigh And Tony Curtis Divorced
While still younger than 4, Curtis saw her parents split up and divorce. While her father moved on to a 17-year-old girl, Curtis and her sister stayed with their mother. Curtis attended schools in and around Los Angeles, but for her final year, she attended and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in Connecticut, when her mother worked on Broadway.
Spending her teen years as the child of famous parents was difficult, Curtis told Rolling Stone:
Whenever I met anyone new, I was introduced as Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh’s daughter... It screwed with my head... You’re a child trying to develop an identity and a sense of self-worth, and all this Hollywood stuff plagues you and makes you kind of wonder who you are. Then you’re 12 through 18, and you’re developing [physically] and emotionally. And it’s hard.
Her mother urged her not to go into the family business until after she turned 18, which is when Curtis auditioned for the role of Nancy Drew on a TV series. While she did not land that part, she eventually found one on Operation Petticoat before breaking through in Halloween.
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Curtis Was Closer To Her Stepfather Robert Brandt Than To Tony Curtis
After her parents divorced when she was 3, Curtis lived with her mother and sister while her father, battling with pills and alcohol, moved from new wife to new girlfriend. As a result, Curtis found herself closer to her mother and stepfather, Robert Brandt. In an interview with People in 1978, Curtis spoke about her relationships to her father figures: "Who raised me? People may think I don’t love Tony, but I just don’t know him that well."
To Rolling Stone in 1985, she clarified:
My father was sort of a stranger, then a real stranger, then an enemy. Now he’s a friend. My stepfather, who raised me since I was a little girl, is Daddy, the one I go to with dad problems. He has always been around and supportive - a complete papa.
Curtis Learned From Leigh How To Use Her Fame To Give Back To Others
Curtis credits her mother's generous spirit for her own giving nature and willingness to fund or help out causes. While speaking to Closer Weekly in 2019, Curtis revealed that her mother belonged to an organization called SHARE, "a group of Hollywood moms who dedicate months of their time to put on a [benefit] show every year.”
Curtis told Closer Weekly about her mother's stance on charity: "The amount of attention, money and adulation public figures get is obscene. Something better has to come from it."
Curtis gives her time to Project Angel Food, the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation, and other causes. She also speaks to others about her struggle with substance dependence after becoming hooked on opioid medication following eye surgery.
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Curtis Wrote A Children's Book Dedicated To Her Mother
Curtis became a published author in 1993 with her children's book When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old's Memoir of Her Youth. As of 2019, Curtis has published 12 books that spent time on bestseller lists, all tackling childhood issues and questions about moods, adoption, and other subjects.
In 2010, Curtis released her ninth book, My Mommy Hung the Moon. She told Julie Chen in an interview with CBS News that the book was dedicated to her own mother, even though Curtis didn't sense the same kind of "mother love" that the book is about from Leigh:
This book is about mother love, and I've raised two children, and I have had the great pleasure of feeling mother love - when a child looks at you and you understand that you are the most important person that that human being ever will meet.
I loved my mother. I love my mother to this day. But I don't remember that bond, that mother love.
Leigh Kept Her Daughters Grounded With Hand-Me-Downs
Instead of lavishing her girls with opulent gifts after her divorce from Tony Curtis, Leigh chose to keep Curtis and her sister Kelly away from privileged expectations. According to Leigh in a 1978 interview with People, "Jamie wore Kelly’s hand-me-down dresses, and I also encouraged them to share their toys and clothes with those less fortunate."
The sense of giving and gratitude for what they had stuck with Curtis throughout her life, because she lived with a roommate and did all her own housework. She regularly attends fundraisers for charity and speaks to groups about recovery.
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Curtis Credits Her Mother's Successful Marriage To Brandt As An Example For Her Own
“My mother and stepfather [Robert Brandt] were married for 43 years, so I had a very good role model for that,” Curtis said in 2019. Her father, Tony Curtis, married six times.
Curtis took lessons from her mother's fourth marriage (and only union after her divorce from Tony Curtis) to apply to her own with actor and writer Christopher Guest. Curtis told the Today show that her own approach to marriage is "don't get divorced." She explained in Good Housekeeping:
You think you're having a bad week, but stay on the bus, because one of these days you'll look out the window and it'll be beautiful. I think it can apply to almost anything where you feel unhappy in that moment. I'm not a wild romantic. I'm a realist. I respect him. And I just don't leave.
