Jamie Lee Curtis Overview
Jamie Lee Curtis was an American big screen and television actress. Her debut film, titled Halloween, where she essayed the role of Laurie Strode was a hit and established her as a noted actress in the horror genre. Eventually, her remarkable performance in the film landed her other films in the genre including Terror Train, The Fog, Roadgames, and Halloween II. She earned the title of scream queen for her characteristics in horror films. Later she excelled in the comedy genre with equal success and received favorable reviews which established her as a versatile actress. Some of her finest comedy films are Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda, and True Lies. She has bagged several awards including the BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, Saturn Award, and American Comedy Award. At present she plays Dean Cathy Munsch, the lead role in the series Scream Queens.
Started Her Career
Before 19-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis made her feature film debut as shy teenage babysitter Laurie Strode in the 1978 horror film Halloween, she was best known for being a child of Hollywood Royalty, as the daughter of Hollywood stars Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. Indeed, her casting in Halloween owed to her mother’s own iconic scream queen persona from the 1960 thriller film Psycho. However, her unconventional beauty formed a distinctive screen presence that made her seem relatable and sympathetic to audiences. Moreover, while the success of Halloween initially brought her a modest degree of film stardom, subsequent starring roles, between 1978 and 1981, in the horror films The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, Road Games, and Halloween II cemented her status as cinema’s ultimate scream queen.
Her Beauty Appearance
Jamie Lee Curtis’s unconventional appearance made her stand apart from virtually all of her contemporaries, her unclassifiable mixture of odd beauty and sex appeal made her appear inherently accessible to audiences. Moreover, her unconventional appearance, embodies the Halloween buried theme of sexual repression, as the virginal Laurie’s sexually repressed state makes Laurie highly attuned to the constant malevolent presence of Michael Myers, who was also a sexually repressed figure in Halloween, after being incarcerated in a sanitarium for fifteen years.
Her Title As Queen Of Scream
As the success of Halloween inspired a legion of Halloween copycat films between 1978 and 1981, led by the 1980 hit Friday the 13th, Jamie Lee Curtis starred in two of these pale direct imitations, Prom Night and Terror Train. Of course, countless actresses have attempted to follow her example within the horror genre over the past forty years, none of them have embodied the scream queen persona as powerfully as her. Moreover, approximately forty-five years after Curtis debuted as Laurie in Halloween, when most people hear the term scream queen, the first actress whom people invariably think of is Jamie Lee Curtis.
However, while Jamie Lee Curtis proved herself to be a capable actress in various film genres in the 1980s and 1990s, in films like Love Letters, My Girl, and True Lies, she never completely lost touch with her scream queen persona, as evidenced by the 1990 action thriller film Blue Steel, in which she plays a rookie New York police officer, a sexually repressed young woman, who becomes the object of a psychotic admirer’s murderous fantasies. Moreover, her virtually unmatched genre identification and resulting goodwill have given her a seemingly eternal level of popularity and relevance that she has been able to successfully transfer to various formats and genres.