Jamie Lee Curtis reveals why she's glad her mom didn't let her audition for iconic horror film aged 12
Jamie Lee Curtis has explained why she's glad her mom turned down a now-infamous horror role for her when she was just 12.
While speaking on The Drew Barrymore Show earlier this month, Curtis explained that she had been approached to audition for The Exorcist back in the early seventies, but her mom, Janet Leigh, said no.
Revealing that Leigh knew the producer Ray Stark, Curtis explained that she was only 12 years old at the time.
“He called my mom and said, ‘Hey, I’m producing the movie of the book The Exorcist. Will you let Jamie audition for it?’” Curtis told Barrymore.
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“And at the time I was probably 12 and, like, cute and kind of sassy and I had some personality, and I’m sure he saw me at a party and was like, ‘Oh, she’d be funny.’ And my mother said, ‘No'."
Curtis explained that her mom had been set on her having a childhood, and not getting started in the industry at too young an age.
“My mom really wanted me to have, thank God, a childhood, which I understand you didn’t get. You didn’t get that option," she said.
Curtis eventually made her debut on screen with a number of TV roles before breaking into the horror genre as Laurie Strode in Halloween at the age of 19.
Barrymore, meanwhile, has often spoken about how she felt as a child, being pushed into the spotlight at just five years old in Altered States.
As a young star, she was often taken partying by her mother and was out with her and her friends up to five times a week, she told The Guardian in 2015.
She also revealed that Steven Spielberg was the only ‘parental figure’ she’d ever had.
The pair first met on the set of E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, which became a breakout role for the A-lister.
However, she treasured her time with the legendary filmmaker, telling Vulture: "[He is] the only person in my life to this day that ever was a parental figure."
Spielberg has since revealed that he had major concerns for Barrymore, since knowing how disrupted her childhood was.
In the same Vulture interview, he said: "She was staying up way past her bedtime, going to places she should have only been hearing about, and living a life at a very tender age that I think robbed her of her childhood.
"Yet I felt very helpless because I wasn't her dad. I could only kind of be a consigliere to her."
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Entertainment, Jamie Lee Curtis, Drew Barrymore
Lucy Devine