Jamie Lee Curtis is stepping away from acting, saying her decision was shaped by watching how Hollywood cast aside her famous parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, as they got older.
In a candid interview with The Guardian, the Oscar-winning actress revealed she has been gradually preparing for retirement for years.
“I saw my parents lose the very thing that gave them fame, purpose, and security,” Curtis said. “Hollywood rejected them once they reached a certain age. I watched their incredible success fade, and that kind of erosion is heartbreaking.”
Curtis, who won Best Supporting Actress in 2023 for Everything Everywhere All at Once, said her retreat from Hollywood has been intentional. “I’ve been self-retiring for 30 years. I’ve been slowly backing away so I don’t end up suffering the same fate. I want to leave the party before I’m no longer invited.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the Bear star made headlines for her pointed criticism of the beauty industry, comparing the widespread cosmetic alteration of women’s appearances to a form of “genocide.”
Bringing a pair of oversized red wax lips to the photoshoot as a visual statement, Curtis didn’t hold back. “I’ve been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex. They’ve disfigured themselves,” she said.
Asked if the term “genocide” was too extreme, she stood firm: “It’s a strong word, but that’s why I use it. I truly believe we’ve erased one or two generations of natural human beauty. This idea that you can chemically or surgically reshape yourself has created a wave of disfigurement, especially among women.”
Despite her move toward retirement, Curtis isn’t done just yet. She’ll next appear in Freakier Friday, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2003 hit Freaky Friday, in which she and Lindsay Lohan played a mother and daughter who switch bodies.
Explaining the long delay between films, Curtis told People that it was always about timing. “Everyone kept asking, ‘When’s the sequel?’ But the truth was, Lindsay needed to be old enough to play a mom to a teenager. Then she had this beautiful baby and visited me with the child. That’s when we got serious about making it happen.”
Freakier Friday is set to hit theaters on August 8.
