Jamie Lee Curtis Turns 68 on November 22, From Halloween to an Oscar Win

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Jamie Lee Curtis turns 68 on November 22. She is the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, so Hollywood was never a mystery to her. She could have coasted on that name, but she kept choosing scary, silly and unexpected roles, and she made most of them better than they had any right to be.

Photo: Robert Stirrup, U.S. Navy, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Halloween (1978) is the obvious starting point. John Carpenter's low-budget slasher made her Laurie Strode, a babysitter who survives the night, and it turned her into a horror icon almost overnight. She came back for H20 (1998), and again in David Gordon Green's 2018 Halloween, where Laurie is an older woman with a shotgun and a lot of anger.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Trading Places (1983) shows her comic timing. She plays Ophelia, a street-smart hustler who gets caught up in a bet between two rich men, and she is funnier than the script deserves. True Lies (1994), with Arnold Schwarzenegger, showed she could handle action too.

Photo: Samhsa, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She plays Deirdre Beaubeirdre, an IRS auditor with a surprisingly big heart, and her scenes with Michelle Yeoh are some of the funniest and most affecting in the film.

Photo: Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Which Jamie Lee Curtis film do you rewatch? Trading Places is my pick for pure chaos, but Halloween is the one I put on when the nights get dark early.