Jamie Lee Curtis was born on November 22nd, 1958 in Los Angeles. Both her father Tony Curtis and her mother Janet Leigh were major film stars. This celebrity status estranged Jamie from her fellow classmates during high school. She would often ditch her fancy clothing in favour of cast-offs from the lost-and-found. She eventually quit there and finished school on the East Coast. During this time, she decided to follow in her parent’s footsteps and become an actress. Her mother, however, insisted she go to college first. She went to the University of the Pacific for one semester and then dropped out.

Curtis began her career by auditioning for “The Nancy Drew Mysteries”. Although she was turned down, the producers were impressed enough to cast her in “Operation Petticoat”. This was a sitcom about a group of nurses stationed on a submarine. Curtis played Lieutenant Barbara Duran, though she only lasted one season with the show.

Her big breakthrough came with Halloween (1978). This was the story of Mike Myers, who had killed his sister when he was six. Now twenty-three, he had been released from a mental institute and was out to kill his babysitter and her friends. The movie, which was made for $325 000, stunned everyone by bringing in $47 million at the box office. Unfortunately, the movies that Curtis appeared in afterwards had her typecast in the role of the screaming woman.

She broke out of this typecast with movies such as Love Letter and Trading Places (both 1983). Unfortunately, these placed Curtis in a new typecast: She was now the woman who appeared nude/scantily clad in movies.

Curtis pulled her personal life together in 1984. That year, she finally conquered her cocaine addiction, a problem that she had shared with her father. Also that year, she married British actor Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman). Years later, Curtis would be declared the Baroness Lady Haden-Guest after her husband inherited the barony.

Curtis put her typecasts to rest in 1988 with A Fish Called Wanda. In the movie, Wanda (Curtis) and Otto (Kevin Kline), two Americans teamed up with George (Tom Georgeson) and Ken (Michael Palin), two Englishman, for a diamond robbery. Wanting the diamonds for themselves, Wanda and Otto ratted out George and Ken. They did not know that George and Ken had moved the diamonds. To find the diamonds, Wanda decided to get closer to George’s lawyer, Archie (John Cleese). This hilarious movie did well commercially and allowed Curtis to appear in more varied roles.

The next year, she starred in the workplace sit-com “Anything But Love”. She and Richard Lewis co-starred as two co-workers who are attracted to each other but didn’t want a romantic relationship. Although it never had particularly high ratings, it was well respected.

Since then, she has appeared in numerous movies of differing styles. Her two movies that contrast the most would be My Girl (1991) and True Lies (1994). My Girl was a children’s romantic comedy with Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky. True Lies was a James Bond-styled thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Curtis played Helen, a housewife that did not know her husband Jack (Schwarzenegger) was actually a secret agent. In fact, she even has an affair because she thought that Jack was boring. He found out about this and took her along as he battled terrorist that had acquired nuclear weapons. The movie was given good reviews and was a major commercial success.

These two movies serve as a dichotomy of Curtis’ post-Wanda work. She has appeared in all kinds of movies, playing all kinds of parts. She has even reprised her role of Laurie Strode in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later. All of these have contributed to a body of work that has established her as a talented actress, rather than a screaming stereotype.