By India McCarty
Jamie Lee Curtis expressed her gratitude that her mother kept her from the movie industry as a child.
“[A producer] called my mom and said, ‘Hey, I’m producing the movie of the book “The Exorcist.” Will you let Jamie audition for it?’” the actress shared on an episode of THE DREW BARRYMORE SHOW. “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’ mother, PSYCHO star Janet Leigh “really wanted me to have, thank God, a childhood,” she recalled, telling Barrymore, “Which I understand you didn’t get. You didn’t get that option.”
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Barrymore became an overnight sensation as a child after appearing in E.T. and has been very open about the negative affects early fame had on her — and how her work as an actor gave some much-needed structure to her tumultuous home life.
“I have defended the work I’ve done my whole life because I think people think working young can get you into so much trouble,” the actress said during an episode of her morning show. “It wasn’t the work. The work gave me a life. It was me! I’m responsible for my own mistakes.”
She added, “It’s a tremendous amount of pressure, but it was the great pressure that really helped me and gave me an anchor that I didn’t have elsewhere.”
While Curtis didn’t become a child star, she did eventually find fame at 19 in the 1978 horror movie HALLOWEEN. She has spoken about the ups and downs of fame as well, discussing her own parents’ experiences with celebrity; in addition to Leigh, Curtis’ father was actor Tony Curtis.
“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 told The Guardian. “I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that’s very painful.”
The actress added that she has been “self-retiring for 30 years” and “prepping” to exit Hollywood so as not to “suffer the same as my family did.”
“I want to leave the party before I’m no longer invited,” Curtis finished.
While Curtis eventually found fame, the actress is grateful that her mother kept her from entering the entertainment industry at a young age, avoiding the pitfalls many young stars face.
Read Next: Why This Actress Wanted to Raise Her Kids in a Traditional Family
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