Jamie Lee Curtis, Lady Haden-Guest (born November 22, 1958) is an American actress and author. Although at the beginning of her career she was known as a scream queen because of her roles in many horror movies (beginning with her first ever role as Laurie Strode in 1978's Halloween), Curtis has since appeared in a variety of different movie genres. Her role as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the 2022 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has also received a Grammy Award nomination and two Golden Globe Awards.
Her 1998 book, Today I Feel Silly, and Other Moods That Make My Day, made The New York Times best-seller list. In the late 2010s, Curtis returned as Strode in the horror movie Halloween (2018) and its sequels Halloween Kills (2020) and Halloween Ends (2021). She also played Linda Drysdale in the mystery comedy movie Knives Out (2019) and is well known for her roles as Wanda Gershwitz in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Helen Tasker in True Lies (1994).
Early life
Curtis was born in Santa Monica, California. She is the daughter of actor Tony Curtis and actress Janet Leigh. Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants and two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish. Curtis's parents divorced in 1962, after which her mother married Robert Brandt. Curtis has an older sister, Kelly Curtis, who is also an actress, and several half-siblings (all from her father's remarriages), Alexandra, Allegra, Ben, and Nicholas Curtis (who died in 1994 of a drug overdose). Curtis attended Westlake School (now Harvard-Westlake School) in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills High School, and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall. Returning to California in 1976, she attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She considered majoring in social work, but quit after one semester to pursue an acting career.
Personal life
She is married to actor Christopher Guest (Baron Haden-Guest) and, as the wife of a Baron, she has the title Baroness Haden-Guest and she could be called The Lady Haden-Guest, but she chooses not to use the title nor the style when in the United States.