Moments That Make Us: Jamie Lee Curtis on the Experiences That Transformed Her Life

I barely could spell liberate when I graduated high school. So the fact that I now have written 15 books for children, that I've been an actress for 47 years, my life hinged on a couple seconds I didn't see coming. Put yourself in the path and then see what happens. Last year I started a conversation about life's turning points. This season we're talking about what comes next, the next day and beyond. I'm Melinda French-Gates. These are the moments that make us. Jamie, I'm so glad we finally get to have this conversation. I've been a big fan of your body of work for a long time. Thanks. But in some ways maybe even more importantly your activism and I want to get to that. In your career, when you finished one say film, how often did you know what your next project was or your next film would be? Tell me about that in-between time where you kind of don't know what's going to come next. So what most people don't understand, if you're a freelance actor, you're an unemployed actor. I've been unemployed way, way more than I have been employed and I'm one of the really lucky ones who started at 19 and I'm still working at 67. Like it's unusual the amount of time I have been unemployed is way more than when I'm employed. And the problem is the only reason, part of the reason I did commercials and was a spokesperson, was it was the only time I had a contract for a couple years of work. Very rare that in my career that that's happened. So most of the time it's a one-off and then you're unemployed and looking for work. And tell me about those in-between times, like are you scared? Or do you think maybe I'll never get another film again? I don't think there's an actor working who doesn't say that they think that this is their last job. It's just because you don't control it. Now you see I'm starting to become a boss. Yes you are. And see the boss part of me allows me to start to control a little more about my work. But prior to being a boss, when you're just an employable actor, you are waiting for someone else to come to you and say we would like you to participate in this. And you're waiting. It's just like every person here, every member of this crew is waiting for the next call to say hey we're going to be here but I don't know if they had a job yesterday or if they have a job tomorrow. And the truth is I now I'm doing a boss on a TV show and I'm also an actor in it and I know we have another season of it. And that's a very unusual position for me to know I have another bit of work coming up next month. What have you done to keep yourself calm in that in-between space that you don't know if you're going to have another project? Well I mean first of all I'm a mom. Sure. Two kids 10 years apart. So I had 28 years of parenting while navigating work and not work, work and not work. And I'm a I would like to say a very involved mom to the degree that I can be as a working mom. And because of that you know that the beautiful quotidian routinized part of raising kids. School, after school, lunchboxes, lunchboxes, summers, you know programs, camps, you know. Driving. Driving. Driving but driving is the beautiful part because you learn everything. Totally. Wear beige, lay low. Yep. Don't say a word. Just listen. Yeah. Lay low. See there's your new book. A Guide to Being a Mother. Wear beige, lay low. And listen. And listen. Exactly because you hear the conversations with their friends and what's really going on. Yeah. Tell me what it's like now though to be what my youngest daughter would call a boss lady. I mean the fact that you are. I'm a boss. You're a boss. But I'm also a really fun boss. Okay. I'm a fun boss. I don't take it seriously. Why were you, why was it important for you to want to be a boss? So I'm I have wanted to start a company called Idea Chick. Idea Girl my whole life. I'm just an idea person. I'm you know I've written 15 books for children. I have invented things. I am a I'm an active creative person. I always knew that's who I was and I do it in the same kind of spirit that I do this. Like I don't I don't pretend I'm a boss. I don't like walk around like I'm some boss. I just I'm I was a cheerleader in high school. Oh. I love people. I love teams. My motto is teams make dreams. Talk about when you were younger because I want there'll be a lot of I hope younger women watching this. Of course. Were you an internal cheerleader for yourself like in the tough times when you were between projects and you weren't? Oh no no. How long did it take for you to to develop this side of yourself to know yourself deeply? Well to thine own self be true right. I got sober 26 years ago off of a very quiet opiate addiction and kind of constant alcohol usage without any big dramatic you know stumbles and precipitous falls into a crevasse of embarrassment. But it was always there. I think that really gave me a confidence to understand that I could arrest something that was not that was a problem for me. To thine own self be true I think is the thing that I try to live by. I know when I go to bed at night what I've done for other people. It's the way I can go to sleep and rest my head. If you are such a sort of it sounds like early on a rule follower. Okay. I am. I was total good girl. Okay. Like total good girl. Okay. So but now you're like a rule breaker and you're creative and you're decided you're gonna be a boss. Like where do you go from being the rule follower to saying okay so my full self is gonna come out. I'm guessing you were a good girl. Oh god totally. Catholic girl. Okay. Strays. I mean I'm like not that girl. I was not an academic on any level. I was a cheerleader. I'm an autodidact. I'm a reader. I have to read a book. I can't read it on a screen and I have to write. I can't. I'm not an auditory learner so lecturing is not going to get in because I'm too distracted. I have decided how I have learned. I wanted to be a bad girl. I loved bad girls but I was the ultimate good girl. Again I was raised by a marine. Sure. And you know marines have a code. Yep. And I also was going to be a police officer. I actually thought if I if I when I graduated high school college I thought I would become a police officer, a detective. I went to a girl's school. Me too. Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles. Okay. And it was at this beautiful campus in in West LA and the only rule at the school was you weren't allowed to leave campus without a note. Right that was just the rule. So for a senior class picture the last year I was at the school so I was with the cheerleaders and we were all sitting in a semi-circle with our knees crossed crisscross applesauce and kind of like smiling like that and then there were four bad girls and their senior picture was they were walking away from the camera so their backs were to the camera. Oh my gosh. And they were walking off campus. I thought they were James Dean. I thought they were I to this day the audacity that they would take a picture walking away from the camera walking through the gates of the school. It was as if they were throwing the bird at everybody. I just thought oh I was shaking when I saw it. I was so shocked and that someone could be that brave to break the rule. So I don't see I don't look at myself as a as a rule breaker. Okay so I'm going to ask you about bravery because I see it in you. Well I appreciate it. Let me tell you what I see. Okay. I see an inventor an activist in your career now you're taking on movies where they're really parts of yourself it looks like right everything everywhere all at once. I hardly understood the movie. I'm 61. I still don't understand the movie. And I but you know what it's a movie about it's a movie about love. And I only understood it just so you know when I was at the laundromat and they were shooting the scene where Key and Michelle reconnect. Yeah. And I remember seeing them do the scene and then going oh the movie's about love. Oh okay because I also could barely understand it. But to take on such unusual roles right and to so play the dimension of these roles and even you talking about you know look we shouldn't think of aging is a bad thing like you're willing to speak your truth in the world and that takes bravery. I'm not sure I would call it bravery. I so so let's just talk body image. Okay great. So we're referring to the more magazine article where I took off my clothes and showed the unsuspecting American public women my what my body looked like. The reason I did that is twofold. One I write books for children and my books for children are about things. They're not they are my best thing. They're the best thing I will ever have brought the world besides my own children and and my you know but in my creative life my books are the best thing I will ever give. And they are books about ideas and and complications about being young. And this one book was a book about self-esteem and it was called I'm Gonna Like Me Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem. And it was talking about what self-esteem where does it come from and part of what I was talking about was that I had succumbed to a feeling of low self-esteem because I had done plastic surgery when I was very young because I was hereditarily sort of looking tired and it was a becoming a bit of a problem in my work. And I felt like well if I'm writing a book about self-esteem I have to tell the truth. And I had recent you know and so I said to Moore magazine you know what I'll do your cover but rather than just the pretty picture of Jamie sitting there like this where women are looking and go oh she's so pretty. I said let me show them what I really look like because I believe that after the movie Perfect and all of my body image it's important that they understand that I'm just a regular looking woman. And that was liberating that wasn't brave that was liberating. I've never felt freer in my life than the day I walked into a photo session and said turn on the awful overhead lights and put nothing on me and I'm going to stand here in my underwear. And then you can glam me up but then you have to show both pictures side by side and you have to show how long it took to glam me up how much money it cost and how many people. And that if that was brave to me it was liberation. So being sober is liberation right it's a prison because you're in a prison of of shame if you feel like you have a dependence an addiction on something and if you release that that's liberation. So for me it's less bravery it's more liberation everything everywhere all at once is a liberation for me from the traditional image of me in the movies and it allowed me to play Deirdre in the way that Deirdre was. And I very specifically wanted to look the way I looked and it it was again a liberation for me as an actor. How do we liberate other women? Because I think right now in society or maybe for all of time we try and put women in these roles in these boxes you are both an actor an inventor a mother right a boss now. But you know we say to women be this or be that or women inculcate you should be this or be that or oh you have to choose between a mother and a career you can't do both well when that's not the truth two things can be true at once. What do we do to help liberate women? Wow wow that's a profound question that's a profound question what do we do to liberate women? Well liberation comes from restriction freedom so to liberate someone is to remove them from a prison to remove them from the restrictions that either society or the family or your husband or your job requires of you and that takes leadership to create workplaces to allow that liberation that liberation is only I don't believe it's just going to be the door is open to you every woman if I asked every woman here working here today how long it took to get to be behind that camera or behind that recording equipment my guess is that job wasn't available to them I don't know what the key to opening that door of liberation is except examples of women like yourself who use the position of power influence exposure that you have that I have to lead by example and to welcome in women into the world and to create opportunities for them it is I mean it's a profound question that that that could be a I mean not that you need my advice but you could literally ask that question to a hundred women all over the world and write a book about that idea of liberation how do we do it because it's not also a conscious no thing on my part and besides the book of awakening which we both share the mark nepo book of awakening which is a daily it's sort of a daily idea that's posited by him using other thought leaders and then he as a poet kind of consolidates it into an offering of each day and it's a book that was really profound for me me too but the book that really changed my life was a book called special topics in calamity physics by an author named marisha pestle and in it it's a mystery and in it someone whoever's voice it is is saying you know we think that life is about where you were raised what your parents did where you went to school what your first job was starting salary that that's what determines your life and then she wrote in this book it isn't and she said life hinges on a couple seconds you never see coming and what you do in those seconds determines everything from then on and you won't know what you're going to do until you're there that changed my life because i realized that has happened to me and all of a sudden all of the i don't know what i'm doing what am i supposed to do all of the what where is the path what path am i supposed to be on to liberate to get out right i barely could spell liberate when i graduated high school so the fact that i now have written 15 books for children that i have that i've been an actress for 45 fifth 47 years what happened my life hinged on a couple seconds i didn't see coming it like it hinged it pivoted a hundred percent and that's where you have to just also put yourself in the path and then see what happens what was that moment that liberated you what is that unhinged well i'm getting sober yeah was a hinge you know i saw my husband's picture in a magazine and said i was going to marry him literally to a girlfriend sitting on a couch like we're sitting you just knew i looked in a magazine and went down went oh i'm gonna marry that guy she said who i was like that one and i ended up leaving my number with his agent he never called me and then months later i ran into him at a restaurant where he was sitting as far away as you are and he looked at me and went like this and i looked at him and went and then he got up to leave and then he stood there and he went and i went and he left but he called me the next day we got married four months later my life hinged on a couple seconds i never saw coming both of my children are adopted right my life hinged on a couple seconds i didn't see coming i didn't know when i picked up the phone that i was going to become a mother um the jobs i've done have led to other jobs again the hinging is i didn't know it's it's it's ridiculous but even halloween which was a little low budget horror movie the truth of the matter is the reason john landis hired me for trading places was because when john landis was doing a short about horror movie trailers called coming soon remember those 50s horror movie trailers he was doing a documentary about them and he said i need somebody to narrate this documentary and obviously they were like oh well the current scream queen i was 23 and he met me to do that and then when he was casting trading places he told paramount i'm gonna put this girl in that part and they were like no you're not it's the female lead in a huge studio comedy you're gonna hire a well-known comedian and he said no but my point is my life hint when i met him to do a horror movie trailer narration it hinged my life because the next thing i know i met him did that work and then all of these other movies hinged from that so you can't predict nothing okay just before we close what role has spirituality played in your life you and i both love this mark nico book it touches a place in me that is hard for me to describe to people what role has spirituality played in all of this i wrote the foreword for that book you in this edition and i i do i was not raised with any religion i was my mother read something called the daily word um my father was jewish but not a practicing member of the jewish faith you know and i was raised really with no religion and so i did find all through my adulthood i have looked i've read houston smith's the religions of man and my daughter was a buddhist for a while and so i have opened myself to what is religion what is what is a gathering of people with a common thread what what does that do for you is that spirituality or is that routine and does routine yield spirituality the ritual is there a shared community experience is this yeah this is spirituality yes yes this right here i don't know what god is but i'm also sober and the the tenets of sobriety is a belief in something bigger than you now in my world this is bigger than me because i'm not alone yeah right now i am connected to you a stranger totally until an hour ago yep so to me that's as close to god as i need to come i don't believe god is a puppet master and i but i say god bless you to people all day long because i do believe there is a presence of god in my life in all of the aspects of my life and all the hinges exactly god was hinging it wasn't it that wasn't just random in the great success that i've now had as a professional when i say it's a weep or we program it's a we event i'm including god in that i don't understand why i get this why do i get to sit here with you right me how did we same i feel the same way but but so there has to be something there's a one of my absolute favorite lines in a musical is at the end of Les Miserables and it's to love another person is to see the face of god and i was like oh that's what my spirituality is that's my it's that connection between one another and whatever flows between that to me that is spirituality you have to trust it and i see it everywhere yeah you see it with everybody it isn't an elitist concept no no no no it's a human concept well we need to end i don't believe that's true but we actually see here i am here's my rule breaker here i am here's the rebel you're like no okay we're gonna just know three more hours just know you guys can leave but i'll stay here i've loved me too it's been wonderful and i hope we get another chance i know no i'm a hot i know we both me too