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Jamie Lee Curtis is reflecting on the harsh criticism she received early on in her career.
When the actress, 66, starred in the 1985 romance drama “Perfect,” she claims the cinematographer made a remark that not only hurt her, but caused her to go under the knife.
“He was like, ‘Yeah I’m not shooting her today. Her eyes are baggy,’” Curtis recalled to Sharyn Alfonsi on Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes.”
“I was 25. For him to say that was very embarrassing. So as soon as the movie finished, I ended up having some plastic surgery.”
The film was directed by James Bridges and followed reporter Adam Lawrence (John Travolta), who falls in love with aerobics instructor Jessie Wilson (Curtis) during an assignment.
The “Halloween” star explained that going forward with the operation did not go well.
“That’s just not what you want to do when you’re 25 or 26,” Curtis explained. “I regretted it immediately and have kind of, sort of regretted it since.”
“I became very enamored with the warm bath of an opiate,” she continued. “You know, drank a little bit, never to excess, never any big public demonstrations. I was very quiet, very private about it. But it it became a dependency for sure.”
Curtis now has 26 years of sobriety under her belt and can see the project through a more appreciative lens.
“Of course, I look really good in a leotard,” Curtis said, referencing her iconic scene from the film. “Believe me, I’ve seen enough pictures of me in that leotard where even I go like, ‘Really? Come on.’”
“It went on like seven minutes,” Curtis teased about making the original scene. “It’s a lot.”
Curtis even recreated the sequence in January with Jimmy Fallon, which was aired on “The Tonight Show,” leotard and all.
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time Curtis has spoken about the comment, which she previously shared was made by Gordon Willis.
“One day, I was on the movie ‘Perfect,’ and Gordon Willis, the great cameraman, looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, I’m not shooting her today,’” she revealed to The New Yorker in 2019. “I was puffy that day, for whatever reason. I was mortified. Right after that movie I went and had an eye job. That’s when I found Vicodin, and the cycle of addiction began with that.”
That same year, the daughter of actress Janet Leigh and actor Tony Curtis spoke to Variety for the “Recovery Issue” and dove deeper into her cosmetic surgery.
“I naturally had puffy eyes. If you see photographs of me as a child, I look like I haven’t slept,” Curtis recalled. “I’ve just always been that person, and we were shooting a scene in a courtroom with that kind of high, nasty fluorescent light, and it came around to my coverage in the scene, and [the cameraman] said, ‘I’m not shooting her today. Her eyes are too puffy.’”
The comment made the actress feel “mortified and so embarrassed,” so she decided to have a “routine plastic surgery to remove the puffiness.”
Shortly after, Curtis became addicted to Vicodin.
“I was the wildly controlled drug addict and alcoholic,” admitted the star. “I never did it when I worked. I never took drugs before 5 p.m. I never, ever took painkillers at 10 in the morning. It was that sort of late afternoon and early evening—I like to refer to it as the warm-bath feeling of an opiate…I chased that feeling for a long time.”
In 2021, the Hollywood icon confessed why she feels plastic surgery is detrimental to today’s society.
“I tried plastic surgery and it didn’t work. It got me addicted to Vicodin. I’m 22 years sober now,” she reiterated to Fast Company. “The current trend of fillers and procedures, and this obsession with filtering, and the things that we do to adjust our appearance on Zoom are wiping out generations of beauty. Once you mess with your face, you can’t get it back.”
Curtis also feels social media has altered people’s self-perception and has pushed comparison to an all-time high.
“It’s like giving a chainsaw to a toddler,” she said. “We just don’t know the longitudinal effect, mentally, spiritually, and physically, on a generation of young people who are in agony because of social media, because of the comparisons to others. All of us who are old enough know that it’s all a lie. It’s a real danger to young people.”
Curtis, meanwhile, has long been a strong proponent of embracing aging and loving herself in every stage.
“I’m trying to own it. Isn’t that what life is supposed to be? We grow up, we learn, we do all these things. Now we have to own it,” she told Today in 2024. “We have to own who we are, be who we are, and be in full acceptance of who we are and what we’re not. And I think that’s the beauty of me right now—owning it.”
Curtis has also taken a step back from being a people pleaser.
“I’m sober for a long time, long time—almost 25 years,” the star expressed. “And the best thing I learned last year in recovery was people aren’t pleased when you stop people-pleasing … It was as if the greatest sage arrived on me.”
She added, “I say what I mean, I mean what I say and I try not to say it mean.”