It’s hard to imagine that someone who’s as vibrant and, frankly, frequently employed as Jamie Lee Curtis has been thinking about retirement. But, the woman who won her first Oscar in 2023 (for Everything Everywhere All At Once) has been kicking around Hollywood for nearly 50 years at this point. She recently spoke about her thoughts on retirement, and admitted that there’s a specific reason why considering it is so difficult for her.
What Did Jamie Lee Curtis Say About The Idea Of Retirement Being Hard For Her?
In her many years on the big and small screen, Jamie Lee Curtis has done pretty much everything. From her breakout role as one of the leading scream queens of the ‘70s in Halloween, to films that showed her funny side like Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda, and 2025 movie schedule entries Freakier Friday and Ella McCay, and action-filled popcorn pics like True Lies.
For many of us, the time eventually comes when we think about leaving our working lives behind, though, and Curtis has been considering just that recently, despite all her recent success. When speaking to People on the Ella McCay red carpet, the actress revealed her thoughts on the matter, explaining her recent comments during an interview where she talked about retiring, and said:
I am done self-retiring. But no, of course I'll retire. [I have] probably claimed retirement four times. What he didn't use was the example I was giving was my parents. So what he didn't use was the context of that statement. The context of that statement was I watched my parents, who loved this industry, who were mega stars. I'm a little minor twilight.
The interview in question was for Today, where Curtis noted that she’s “probably claimed retirement four times” previously, because she wants “to get out before you no longer ask me to be in,” meaning that she wants to stop acting before she’s no longer offered work.
This idea of retiring, however, is so difficult for her because of how she watched that exact thing happen to her famous parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, as they aged and wanted to keep acting, but just weren’t being sought out for jobs anymore. She continued:
They were mega, mega in their era and they were denied access to the very thing they loved to do, which was the movies, acting in the movies. And I watched both of them lose that life force because of aging and just getting older. They just didn't have those opportunities, and it was heartbreaking.
I certainly feel like this is something we don’t often think about when it comes to actors or other entertainers, but it must be extremely difficult to watch your career just kind of fade away, especially when you want to keep going and know that you can. The Knives Out star (who’s returning to the mystery genre by taking on the iconic lead role in Murder She Wrote) had an unfortunate front-row seat when it came to watching her parents deal with just that “heartbreaking” situation, and she’s looking to keep herself from suffering the same fate.
She added that the idea of going through that is “too humiliating” for her, so she’s trying to “take advantage of the opportunities that I have” while continuing to have “one foot out the door.” So, let’s all hope that the door stays open for Curtis for many more years to come.
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