The (Not So) Strange Career of Jamie Lee Curtis

For those trying to make sense of the strangeness of a moment in which Sydney Sweeney has time and again ended up at the center of the pernicious and rancid foolishness that is the culture war the trajectory of actress Jamie Lee Curtis' career has its interest.

Remembering Curtis' early work it is common--and not wholly inappropriate--to write of her as having started out as a "scream queen" due to her association with John Carpenter's Halloween series and The Fog. However, it is also the case that, if making quite the contrast with such classically striking contemporaries as Kathleen Turner, Kim Basinger and Michelle Pfeiffer (indeed, those who subscribe to a certain rumor about her have been known to pick apart her looks in search of evidence with which to support their case), and less associated than they with glamorous roles amid that rebirth of old-fashioned glamour that was the '80s, her turns in Trading Places and Perfect, and in less well-remembered films like Love Letters as well, brought her a measure of "sex symbol" status that was important to her subsequent career. After all, even in a film where there was rather less emphasis on her body like A Fish Called Wanda (and the film's measure of sex and nudity played for laughs) the premise that her character could easily seduce any man she meets is central to the plot, while if the impression she makes on audiences in this respect has been more uneven than that of many of her contemporaries this seems to have factored even in her landing roles where that image was quite relevant. Exemplary of this is her part as Helen Tasker in True Lies, where it was key to the story that the film's unlikely sequence of events take her from suburban frump to quasi-Bond girl--in contrast with, for instance, an actress who might never have been convincing as a frump, or at all plausible in the famous hotel room striptease scene--which scene, of course, reinforced her sex symbol image again. (Indeed, the year of True Lies' release the latest installment from the Leisure Suit Larry series "honored" Ms. Curtis by including her in the cast of female celebrity parodies who are love interests of the protagonist in the form of Jamie Lee--well, those who really want to know can easily find out that information.)

Still, even as that sex symbol status would seem to have been hugely important to her career Curtis was also inclined to push back against it from quite early on--with the scene in True Lies itself rating a mention in such a discussion. The original script for the film called for Curtis' character to go fully nude in the scene, but Curtis proposed that the stripping stop at her underwear, and that the scene add an element of slapstick, undercutting the effort at sensuality with humor (producing the version actually to be seen in the film)--all as, of course, just a few years on she was to (giving voice to her daughter's reaction to her consciousness being inside her middle-aged mother's body) stare at herself in the mirror and cry out "I'm like the crypt keeper!" in Freaky Friday. And of course, there has been Curtis' succession of roles in recent years, not least her Oscar-winning part in Everything Everywhere All At Once, what many thought was going to be another Oscar-nominated role in The Last Showgirl--and the sequel to Freaky Friday this past summer. In fairness, it is far from uncommon for actors of all genders and ages to push back against a screen image (a tendency that has always sat awkwardly with the attempt to make actors into Stars with all the larger-than-life one-dimensionality that requires), but it is hard to think of any comparably high-profile performer who so much, and with such gusto, played against a sex symbol image specifically. It also seems impossible to deny the part of the prevailing gender politics in the situation, which have the press loudly cheerleading such efforts. "You've never looked better on screen!" goes the shout-out of respectable opinion to Curtis for her turn as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in "EEAAO" (with, indeed, Google AI echoing the sentiment as it forces its unasked-for opinion upon users of the search engine). Meanwhile, other opinions about the matter (not least the opinions of those who would regard this judgment as so remote from the reaction of anyone with any aesthetic sense at all that this statement can only be hypocritical "virtue-signaling") are not to be found platformed anywhere near a mainstream media outlet, or indeed the existence of such opinion-holders normally acknowledged--such that for those who find it ridiculous that the press expects the whole public to be delighted that an actress "looks like hell" on screen any expression of opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy seems to them like something to celebrate.