At 28, Jamie Lee Curtis Was Figuring Out Motherhood

In 1986, Jamie Lee Curtis was already a bona fide movie star, transitioning from ’80s scream queen to newly minted sex symbol after starring in 1985’s romantic drama Perfect opposite John Travolta (and yes, that aerobics scene still goes viral). But just 22 days after turning 28, the actor experienced a life-changing milestone.

“My life completely changed with the birth of our daughter, Annie,” Curtis, now 67, tells Bustle. “I was a young mom at the end of 1986, and I was starting that impossible-to-describe work balance between personal life, motherhood, and work.”

At the time, Curtis — the daughter of late actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh — was living in Los Angeles with her husband, comedian and filmmaker Christopher Guest, when they adopted Annie. Despite all the resources out there, nothing prepped Curtis for the “tectonic shift” in her life.

“There are so many books written, so much money being made trying to prepare you for something unpreparable. It’s the great lie,” Curtis says. “So you figure it out on the fly, as we’ve all figured it out in our lives.”

Over the past 40 years, the actor has managed to figure it out, to great success: Her two daughters are all grown up (she adopted a second child, Ruby, when Annie was 9), and Curtis, over the past four years especially, has been relishing in a career resurgence, winning an Oscar for her performance in 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once and an Emmy for her work in The Bear in 2024.

The actor’s status as a sex symbol is also coming full circle with her latest role in Prime Video’s crime drama Scarpetta (streaming now), which she executive produced. In the show, based on Patricia Cornwell’s bestselling series, Curtis plays Dorothy Farinelli, the wild sister of Nicole Kidman’s titular medical examiner, who is tasked with solving a mysterious murder. As Curtis describes, Dorothy brings an “incredible lightness of being” to the series, allowing the actor to explore a side of herself she hasn’t visited in a while.

“Dorothy is by nature a maneater [and] a very sexual creature,” Curtis says. “Dorothy is the first time I have really let it all loose again.”

Below, Curtis recalls the challenges of becoming a mom, her iconic pixie cut, and the advice she’d give her 28-year-old self now.

Take me back to 1986 and 1987, when you were 28. How did motherhood change the way you looked at your career and goals?

I did A Fish Called Wanda when my daughter was 6 months old. We lived in London for that film. We shot an hour away from where I lived, which meant every morning, I got up at 4 a.m. and was in a car at 5 a.m. for a 6 o’clock call on the set. I’m leaving a 6-month-old sleeping baby in a crib with my husband and a babysitter, a nanny that I picked up in England, and I was conflicted. I would cry for the entire car ride because I felt that intense dislocation between wanting to be there with my daughter and be the parent I wanted to be and be the artist I wanted to be.

The push-me, pull-you part of being a parent is very hard to metabolize, and I did not metabolize it well. I would cry on my way to work, then I’d work for 12 hours at a time, and then I’d get back in the car for an hour and drive home, and often my baby was asleep. That was just the dance that I’ve had to do. Luckily, my jobs are short-lived, so I can do it for three months and then get time off. Many people don’t get time off.

I’m also curious how you felt about fame as a new mom, just as you were becoming more of a sex symbol. How did you feel about that?

You know what? That is the job. I live a very quiet, private life. I do not bring my work home with me. I would never walk around in a dress like this in my personal life. I’m just not that person.

It’s probably harder on my husband than it is on my children. That’s difficult on a marriage — when your asset often is the way you look, scantily clad. It has to create some level of tension in a relationship. So far, we’ve managed, and I’m at the end of that road.

Have you always kept the movie star separate from your personal life, or did that take time?

If Jamie Lee Curtis was sitting here, I’d be wearing the same black sweater that I have four of, a pair of black pants, a pair of New Balance tennis shoes, and a necklace that has the names of my children on it. That’s who I would be if I was sitting here. But I’m pretending to be the Jamie who is also Dorothy who’s also promoting a TV show.

I believe that I can separate my public life from my private life. But I struggle with it when people assume I have to always be a public person. I’m allowed a private life and worked hard to have this private life as well as this public life.

Tell me about your iconic hairstyle, which you’ve had since the ’80s. What influenced you to cut it short, and do you feel like it’s part of your identity now?

I never knew what to do with my hair. If I had written a book when I was in my 20s, it would have been called Hair Trauma. It’s very thin, very soft, very fine, and it grows weird. I grew it long, I had it short, then I did a movie where I played a Playboy Playmate named Dorothy Stratton in a television film [1981’s Death of a Centerfold], and they bleached my hair. Then I got a perm for another movie, and it burnt my hair off — literally snapped my hair off my head. And I rushed to a hairdresser named José Eber in Beverly Hills, who my manager at the time knew, and I sat down in this chair, and he chopped off all my hair because it was dead. All of a sudden, I have a tiny little face, and it was like, “Oh, my hair looks really good like that.”

It certainly has become a bit of iconography for me. That’s fine. I like that. I go up to women who have short gray hair and wear black glasses, and I go, “How often do you get it?” And they go, “All the time.”

That’s funny, because my mom got her hair cut short, like yours, and my brother kept calling her Jamie Lee Curtis.

I’m sorry to your mom because she is her own self, and she probably looks great with her hair like that.

She did, as do you. What advice would you give to your 28-year-old self?

The thing that is shocking to me about adulthood is how alone you are. When you’re young and in school, you’re just surrounded by people. But the truth is you’re alone with yourself a lot in adulthood, and the goal is to get comfortable with yourself and find the things you like to do, not what somebody else likes to do.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.