"Have been prepping to get out": Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis on her plans of retirement, opportunities for older actors

Time of India

27-07-2025

Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis opened up about her thoughts on retirement and Hollywood's treatment of older actors, drawing on her parents, icons of the industry, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, as reported by Deadline.
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I witnessed my parents lose the very thing that gave them...
She criticised the entertainment world's treatment of older actors, particularly women.
"I witnessed my parents lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their life and their livelihood, when the industry rejected them at a certain age," she said, adding, "I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that's very painful."
Curtis continued, "I have been self-retiring for 30 years.
I have been prepping to get out, so that I don't have to suffer the same as my family did. I want to leave the party before I'm no longer invited."
Curtis wore huge plastic lips in the story's accompanying photoshoot to criticise the rise of cosmetic surgery in recent years, as well as the pressure women face to change themselves. Two months ago, she shared that she got plastic surgery at the age of 25 in response to a disparaging remark about her appearance and "regretted it immediately and have kind of sort of regretted it ever since."
"The wax lips are my statement against plastic surgery," 'The Bear' star said of the aesthetic choice, adding, "I've been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex, who've disfigured themselves. The wax lips really send it home," reported Deadline.
Defending her use of the word "genocide," she added: "I've used that word for a long time and I use it specifically because it's a strong word.
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I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human appearance. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers -- there's a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances.
And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the filter face is what people want. I'm not filtered right now. The minute I lay a filter on and you see the before and after, it's hard not to go: 'Oh, well that looks better.'
But what's better? Better is fake. And there are too many examples -- I will not name them -- but very recently we have had a big onslaught through media, many of those people," as per the outlet.
Along with the soon-to-be-released sequel to 2003's Freaky Friday, Curtis will star in a Murder, She wrote reboot; produce The Lost Bus, a film based on the 2018 Camp Fire starring Matthew McConaughey; and star in and executive produce Scarpetta, based on Patricia Cornwell's best-selling novels, which has already been picked up for two seasons on Prime Video alongside Nicole Kidman.
She will also produce and star in the psychological horror film "Sender," alongside Britt Lower, David Dastmalchian, and Anna Baryshnikov, as well as in James L. Brooks' dramedy "Ella McCay," which stars Woody Harrelson, Emma Mackey, Ayo Edebiri, Rebecca Hall, and Albert Brooks, reported Deadline.