Jamie Lee Curtis has finally won her first Oscar, picking up the best supporting actress award for her performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
“I know it looks like I’m standing up here by myself but I am not, I am hundreds of people. I’m hundreds of people. Where are the Daniels?,” she asked in her emotional acceptance speech, continuing to list of all the people who supported her.
“To all the people who have supported the genre movies that I’ve made for these years, the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together,” she said.
Also read: Is Oscar winner ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ worth watching?
The daughter of two Oscar-nominated actors, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, Curtis’ career has spanned almost five decades, and this year she received her first nomination. She shared the category with “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” star Angela Bassett, her “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-star Stephanie Hsu, “The Banshees of Inisherin” actor Kerry Condon and “The Whale” actor Hong Chau.
A difficult past
There isn’t a pretty picture to be painted of Jamie Lee Curtis’ upbringing. The well-known actress, the daughter of two older heavyweights of Hollywood (Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis), has admitted on numerous times that she had a very rough childhood and adolescence.
The outside world viewed the Curtis family as a clear example of happiness and professional success. However, Jamie Lee Curtis recalled on The View (ABC), “I think my parents hated each other for their entire lives. I grew up in a house filled with hatred.”
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Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh
Jamie Lee confesses that her dad was not a good example for anyone. “He was never interested in being a father,” she told The View. “He did what he was supposed to do from an economic viewpoint, but he was never a father who really engaged with his children.”
The excesses of Tony Curtis
According to various biographies, Tony Curtis was a man troubled by his past as the child of poor immigrants. He also suffered from great anxieties, which he tried to obscure by using drugs and alcohol. His substance abuse drove him away from his family, especially from his daughter Jamie Lee Curtis with whom he never had an ideal relationship.
“Jamie and my father, Tony Curtis, always competed to see who could be more notorious,” Jamie Lee’s step-sister Allegra revealed in her book ‘Me and My Father.’ The memoir came out after the actor had died. “I never considered myself a victim of my childhood; my father could entertain masses of people but was not able to talk about his feelings in private.”
A stormy relationship
The relationship between Tony and Jamie Lee was different from the ones he had with his other children. It was stormy at first, but closer near the end of his life. “There was a time when I was the only child that was talking to him,” Jamie Lee revealed to Variety.
Jamie Lee Curtis used drugs with her father
After confessing that she had been addicted to the painkiller Vicodin for ten years, Jamie Lee made some surprising statements in Variety. “I knew my dad had an issue because I had an issue… I shared drugs with my dad. I did cocaine and freebased once with my dad. But that was the only time I did that, and I did that with him.”
The Curtis family and their addictions
Addiction did not only plague Jamie Lee and her father, but also her brother Nicholas. He’s pictured here as the third from the right. The son of Tony Curtis and his third wife, Leslie Allen, Nicholas died at age 21 of an overdosis.
Overcoming personal difficulties
Despite her difficult personal life, Jamie Lee Curtis had much professional success.
A Fish Called Wanda
Another classic with Jamie Lee Curtis is ‘A Fish Called Wanda.’ It got the actress her first Golden Globe nomination.
