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 Jamie
Lee Curtis: True Thighs
by Amy Wallace
Jamie
Lee Curtis wants you to know the
difference between celebrity
illusion and all-too-real life.
Jamie Lee Curtis
wants to expose herself to you. It
is, she says, the only way to make
things right.
This article is an
excerpt from a larger article that
appeared in the September, 2002
issue of MORE magazine.
Look at her,
traipsing around a whitewashed Los
Angeles photo studio in nothing but
a sports bra and
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Jamie Lee as
she is -- no lights, no
makeup, no retouching.
Photo: MORE magazine,
September 2002
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 A
glam Jamie gets some
help.
Photo: MORE
magazine, September
2002 |
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tight spandex briefs.
But don't let the swagger fool you:
She knows she's taking a risk. The
43-year-old movie star has certainly
shown more skin in the past than
she's flashing right now. But in a
very real way, she's never been more
naked.
"There's a reality to
the way I look without my clothes
on," she says. "I don't have great
thighs. I have very big breasts and
a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've
got back fat. People assume that I'm
walking around in little
spaghetti-strap dresses. It's
insidious -- Glam Jamie, the Perfect
Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah,
blah. And I don't want the
unsuspecting 40-year-old women of
the world to think that I've got it
going on. It's such a fraud. And I'm
the one perpetuating it."
But not anymore. In
an age when divas often use their
clout to nix unflattering photos in
magazines, Curtis has demanded the
opposite: Glam Jamie will pose only
if Real Jamie gets equal time. She
even knows what this article should
be titled. "'True Thighs,'" she
declares.
She knows that her
body, held up as an icon of female
perfection in movies such as, well,
Perfect, has made some women
think that they don't measure up.
She knows how that feels -- not
being good enough. The daughter of
two members of Hollywood royalty,
Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, this
actress has struggled with feelings
of inadequacy all her life. In
youth-obsessed Hollywood, where the
dearth of good roles for women over
28 is a constant lament, it's a
ballsy move to admit your age at all
-- let alone to revel in it. But
Curtis is seeking something bigger
than her next acting job. She wants
to feel at peace with her flaws, her
genes.
This is not the first
time that Curtis's work has led her
to make changes in her life. In
1999, after writing her third
children's book, it occurred to her
that, even as she was urging kids to
pay attention to their feelings, she
had difficulty expressing her own.
The result: She quit drinking and
ended a lengthy addiction to
painkillers that she said began when
she was recovering from plastic
surgery. Yes, that's right: Curtis
is a veteran of the nip-and-tuck.
"I've done it all," she says...
Jamie Lee Curtis Bio
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