From Performing and Pretending
Our readers complain a lot about the way Hollywood people live their lives: no values, no discipline, spoiled kids. Well, listen to this.Nearly six years ago, Jamie Lee Curtis called a halt to her dependency on alcohol and painkillers -- not because her problem had made it into the gossip columns, or was getting in the way of her movie career. She got sober because her daughter, Annie, at the age of 8, told her she needed her.
About the same time, long before Beverly Hills had been struck by mommy mania, Curtis, 46, cut back on the number of movies she took on, accepting roles only if the work schedule lined up perfectly with her family's calendar. Her life at her home near the beach in Los Angeles -- which revolves around Annie, son Thomas, 8, and her husband of 20 years, actor Christopher Guest -- became her No. 1 priority.
And two years ago, for a cover story to promote one of her children's books, she insisted that More magazine run a photo of her, alongside all the glam shots, standing there in just her high-rise underpants and bra. No makeup, no retouching.
After a lifetime in an industry where being real or honest rarely pays off, Curtis, the daughter of screen stars Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, says, "I just wanted to tell the truth for a moment."
Shortly before the release of Christmas With the Kranks (November 24), in which she stars opposite Tim Allen, Curtis sat down with Reader's Digest and convinced us that telling the truth is something she does all the time.
RD: Your mother just passed away. What was it like to grow up the child of such famous people?
Curtis: Growing up for me was very normal. After my mother and father divorced -- I was three -- my mother married a stockbroker. I had a very steady life, for which I credit my stepdad, Bob Brandt, to whom my latest book, It's Hard to Be Five, is dedicated. And I credit my mom for choosing that life over the much more moth-to-the-flame life of show business.
RD: You've taken a break from working as much so you can be home with your children. Once they're grown, will you go back to acting more?
Curtis: I think I'll phase out acting. Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older. I've been going through photos of my mother, looking back on her life and trying to put it into context. Very few people age gracefully enough to be photographed through their aging. Most spend 20 years trying to hold on to [youth]. I don't want to do that.
RD: Tell us about deciding not to work so much.
Curtis: I love performing and pretending -- it's very easy for me. Yet as soon as I had a child -- my daughter was a baby, and we were in London making A Fish Called Wanda -- I was guilt-saturated every day when I left her. It's never gotten easier.
RD: You said you're much more interested in just being yourself these days. What brought that change about?
Curtis: It started when my 18-year-old daughter, who was eight at the time, basically called me on the path I was on. She had a crisis, and it was made very clear to me that I was just not present enough. It was a real gift.
RD: How did an eight-year-old grasp something so complicated?
Curtis: I think it was an unconscious thing, and that she just needed me. It made me start to examine stuff. That cracked it -- and then I got sober. I'll be sober six years in February.
Embracing Reality
RD: Tell us about your drinking, and how you got to the place where you needed to get sober.Curtis: None of it was ever public. Nobody in my family knew. My husband didn't know. It was a big surprise to everyone. I don't want to minimize it, and I don't want to maximize it. But I would anesthetize myself on a daily basis. And I found painkillers were very helpful because they did the job without the messiness of alcohol.
RD: How did getting sober change things?
Curtis: Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can't do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that's all a direct result of getting sober.
RD: Is it hard to maintain?
Curtis: Yeah, there are days it's hard. When my mother was so ill, there was a lot of pain medicine around. The bottle of liquid codeine that sat on her bathroom cabinet -- don't think I didn't see it. And believe me I've gone, "Mmm, okay, you're not going to do that." Because I know I'm an addict, and I know I'm an alcoholic.
RD: Have you gotten involved in programs related to addiction?
Curtis: I work with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I sit proudly as one of only two recovering addicts on their board. We do things like remind people that the family dinner is a really good component of keeping kids away from drugs and alcohol. Kids are going to try drugs and alcohol; that's part of society. I think parents have to ask themselves, When something really good happens, do I celebrate with alcohol? Or, conversely, if something bad happens, do I ameliorate it with alcohol? And do I do that on a regular basis in my home? If you do, the question has to be raised: Are you going to be surprised when your 16-year-old finds out that this boy likes her and goes out and gets drunk? I'm not saying don't enjoy alcohol in moderation with control. But you can also say, "You know what? I'm not going to drink in front of my kids."
RD: You're a public champion in defense of the average woman's body.
Curtis: As much as I have lived off my mother and her unbelievably famous body for all these years, I'm also my grandmother's granddaughter. My paternal grandmother was a big, hefty Hungarian Jewish grandma. So genetically I have that possibility of being a much more zaftig person. When I found it starting to happen, I was like, Whoa! What's this? I attempted various types of plastic surgery, minutely, but enough to stave off this encroaching middle-aged body. And every time I did, something went wrong. It wasn't as promised, or there was a complication. And I was ashamed of myself for feeling like I had to do that in order to look a certain way. I felt misshapen, just not natural anymore. And I think it was a big stimulator of my drug use.
RD: How so?
Curtis: It was during a cosmetic procedure that I first had painkillers.
RD: Why did you feel so pressured to maintain a great body?
Curtis: I remember going to the Emmys wearing a beautiful silver Pamela Dennis silk jersey dress. A few weeks later, one of the tabloids had a picture of me in it with a circle around my stomach. There was a little balloon that said something like, "Somebody better lay off the Cheetos." I kind of panicked. I tried a little liposuction to make it go away, and there were complications. I think I felt that I was very well known for my figure and needed to keep that up for my work. And I regret all of it. I felt fraudulent and very shameful.
RD: Tell us about the groundbreaking photo shoot you did two years ago for More magazine without makeup.
Curtis: It was all part of an evolution. I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling -- and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves. I thought that the best way to do it would be this photograph. I would have done it naked if they'd let me! My deal was that they would use a full-length picture of me in my underwear and a full-length picture of me all done up, and they would write about how long it took and how much it cost, because that was the whole point. It was very liberating.
RD: Do you exercise and diet?
Curtis: I've never run a mile. I try to go to the gym three times a week. And I have to watch what I eat. I'm a normal person. I'm soft in the middle, no matter how many sit-ups I do. I'm always going to be fleshy.
RD: Did anyone advise you not to do that photo shoot?
Curtis: Everybody. But everybody told me not to let my hair go gray too. I have very short hair. It's the only cute haircut I think I've ever had. With short hair you have to get a haircut every two or three weeks. And if you're coloring your hair, you have to color it that often. Every time I did it, I felt fraudulent. I just kept thinking, What am I hiding? What do I care?
The "Write" Stuff
RD: What does your husband think of this new, natural you?Curtis: I think he probably likes me better like this. All through our 20 years when I was trying really hard to be pretty, getting my hair all done up and a lot of makeup, he didn't like all that. And it hurt me a lot because other people would say, "Oh, you look beautiful." And he wouldn't even say, "You look nice." That was always very difficult. Now, I feel that he's much more appreciative.
RD: You two will have been married 20 years this month. What has made your marriage different from that of your parents?
Curtis: My mother and stepfather were married 43 years, so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And, you know, it's just a number.
RD: Twenty is a lot, though.
Curtis: Twenty is big, but it's not about numbers for me. It's like sobriety. It doesn't matter how much time I have. I'm an addict, and I have to be vigilant in taking care of myself. I'd lie to you if I just said, "Oh, yeah, I'm fine, sober forever." That's not how it works. The perspective is to look at sobriety as a daily reprieve from my addictive nature. My marriage? Up to now everything's okay. But it's a real marriage -- imperfect and very difficult. It's all about people evolving somewhat simultaneously through their lives. I think we've emotionally evolved.
RD: You have a new children's book out. Did you get into writing books as a way to taper off working in films?
Curtis: Actually, the books were never a planned career path. I wrote the first one, When I Was Little, when my daughter was four. This cherubic blond baby walked in and boastfully said something like, "You know, when I was two and a half, I didn't take a bath by myself, but now I do." It made me laugh. On a piece of paper I wrote, "A four-year-old's memoir of youth." I wrote down a series of those. I sent it to an agent, and Harper & Row bought it. Each subsequent book had the same process. Ultimately it turns out to be my true voice that I found. Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me. Now all of a sudden I'm so less interested in pretending to be a lot of other people, and much more interested in being me.
RD: Several of your children's books are bestsellers. Would you consider doing a novel or adult self-help book?
Curtis: I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.
RD: What was it about Christmas With the Kranks that got you out of the house and onto the set?
Curtis: Honestly, it was the right people at the time in the right place for the right price. I'm not going to lie to you. I have a very strict boundary that I seek work in. It has to be [shot] in Los Angeles. It has to be a family-area film because I can't go anywhere of an adult nature, really, since I have a teenage daughter. It can't be during summer school vacation. The parameters are such that I don't get offered a lot of work. I'm sure most directors hear my list of don'ts and say forget it.
RD: And you're okay with that?
Curtis: I'm the mommy in my house, and I want to be the mommy in my house. My not being in the house leaves a really gaping hole. All the work built my fame and certainly made me more money, but the toll it took in my home was not good.
RD: You said becoming sober was the single most important thing you've ever done, and that you felt completely free when you showed the world your body as it really is. Has all this made you truly happy?
Curtis: I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change. I think my capacity to change has given me tremendous happiness, because who I am today I am completely content to be.