Jamie Lee Curtis credits filmmaker John Landis with giving one of her many memorable screen characters a signature trait — and with changing the trajectory of her career.
After she made waves playing final girl Laurie Strode in Halloween, and long before she showed off her hot dog fingers in Everything Everywhere All at Once, Curtis starred in Landis’ 1983 comedy Trading Places as Ophelia, a gum-smacking sex worker with a heart of gold.
“John stuck gum in my mouth every day,” Curtis recalled in a new 60 Minutes interview. “Literally I would stand there and he’d walk up, I’d go” — she then mimed opening her mouth and accepting a stick of gum — “‘Okay.'”
The snarky, street-smart Ophelia let audiences see the actress in a new light. And for Curtis, the impact of that can’t be overstated.
Disney/Chris Willard
“It’s just a great part,” she told 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. “But here’s the other thing, and this is crucial: If I’m not in Trading Places, John Cleese does not write A Fish Called Wanda for me. If I’m not in A Fish Called Wanda, Jim Cameron does not write the part in True Lies for me. And that grouping of films gave me my career, for sure.”
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Prior to Trading Places, Curtis had been somewhat typecast as a scream queen due to the success of Halloween. In 1980 alone, she starred in The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train, and she reprised her role Laurie Strode in Halloween II a year later.
Trading Places allowed her to break out of the horror mold, and Landis’ support was crucial.
“[Paramount] did not want me,” Curtis told Yahoo in 2023. “Nobody else wanted me. I guarantee you, John Landis was the only person who said, ‘She’s going to play this part.’ And without that moment, I wouldn’t have now the career that I get to have.”
She added that it was all thanks to the backlot of Universal Studios, where she hung out with Landis and gave him the full Jamie Lee Curtis Experience.
“I’m a bit of smart aleck, I’m a flirt. You know, I’m inappropriate every second of my life,” she explained. “I spent three or four days with him on the backlot at Universal cracking wise, and being who I am — besides doing this very sort of boring narration in this documentary. So he spent four days with me. And by the end of that, he was the one who gave the part in Trading Places to me.”
Watch Curtis’ full 60 Minutes conversation above.
