“Self-Retiring” Jamie Lee Curtis Gears Up For ‘Murder, She Wrote’ Reboot

We all know that Hollywood is a place that values youth above all else, but Jamie Lee Curtis has specific expertise in the matter. The 66-year-old actor has seen her fair share of bumps on the road to fame since her 1978 debut in Halloween, but the one-time ingenue was hit hardest by the business’s agism when she watched her famous parents’ careers trail off in their later years. But despite her worry that she’d follow in their footsteps, the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh is booking projects left and right—including a much-anticipated reboot of the beloved TV series Murder, She Wrote.

Curtis is currently promoting Freakier Friday, the long-awaited sequel to 2003 body swap comedy Freaky Friday, so if it seems like she and co-star Lindsay Lohan are everywhere these days, you might be right. And that ubiquity might continue for a while, as the Oscar winner tells The Guardian she also has “TV series Scarpetta, survival movie The Lost Bus, four other TV shows and two other movies” in the works.

A project she failed to name might be the biggest one for those obsessed with 1980s TV. Deadline reported late last year that Jamie Lee Curtis was in talks to star in a film adaptation of Murder, She Wrote, which ran on CBS from 1984 to 1996. According to the publication, Curtis would play Jessica Fletcher, the role last occupied by Angela Lansbury, in a film written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo.

Jamie Lee Curtis, winner of the Best Supporting Actress award for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” attends the Governors Ball during the 95th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 12, 2023 in Hollywood, California.

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When caught on the red carpet by Entertainment Tonight last week, Curtis appeared to confirm that report, saying “Oh, it’s happening,” when asked about the reboot.

“We’re a minute away, but yeah, [I’m] very excited. Very excited. But I’m tamping down my enthusiasm until we start shooting. I have a couple of other things to hustle, but then I’ll get to enjoy that work.”

And yet, Curtis tells the Guardian, “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.”

That fear of the age wolf at the door started early, as she watched how things went for her parents. “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,” Curtis says. “I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that’s very painful.”

(L-R) Billie Lourd, Kiernan Shipka, Pamela Anderson, Brenda Song and Jamie Lee Curtis of ‘The Last Showgirl’ pose in the Getty Images Portrait Studio Presented by IMDb and IMDbPro during the Toronto International Film Festival at InterContinental Toronto Centre on September 06, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario.

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That said, Curtis is also unwilling to do what some believe needs to be done to remain in the game. The star publicly applauded Pamela Anderson’s famous decision to dial back on her makeup in 2023, proclaiming via Instagram that “THE NATURAL BEAUTY REVOLUTION HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!”

Speaking with the Guardian, Curtis says that “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 yet, you’d better not ask Curtis to expose her arms in public. According to Guardian reporter Emma Brockes, Curtis—like many women—has loose skin on her upper arms, a situation Brockes refers to as “bingo wings.” That natural condition appears to be troubling enough to Curtis that in public, she keeps her arms under wraps.

“You’re not going to see a picture of me in a tank top, ever,” Curtis says, as she—per Brockes—“wobbles” her arms at her. “I wear long-sleeve shirts; that’s just common sense.”

Curtis should do what she wants to do and is comfortable with, of course! So should we all. But her statement is a bit deflating. The star has famously embraced her grey hair and posed for photos without shapewear or retouching, both moves that have helped women understand that red carpet ideals are unattainable as everyday goals. In this Fox Newsified era of sleeveless women, real women letting their arms fly free might be the last great act of body image resistance. Wouldn’t it be exciting if an iconoclast like Jamie Lee Curtis led the way?

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