by Gill Pringle
“There is a lot of anticipation and a lot of love for Laurie Strode and Michael Myers and this collision course that these two people are on,” she says as the release of Halloween Ends approaches.
If Halloween Ends marks Laurie Strode’s last stand – her final face-off with masked nemesis Michael Myers when only one of them will survive – then it surely won’t be Curtis’ last stand.
“I am Laurie Strode and Laurie Strode is me,” she says, fighting words catching in her throat.
“We have become one. We didn’t start out as one. Laurie Strode was an acting part for me in 1978. I was much more like the other two girls in reality, I was not like Laurie Strode.
“But now I am Laurie Strode and it’s also this interesting collision between Jamie and Laurie. And I’m trying to receive it all, and not let it get to my head. I don’t wake up in the morning going ‘You’re wonderful Jamie’. I live a very real life. I have a phrase: ‘Be where your feet are; put your feet on the ground. That’s where you are’.
“So, I’m not in my head, and yet, I’m saying goodbye to Laurie Strode. Everywhere I go, people love her. It’s a big, big wash of love and energy for Laurie Strode. I’m just receiving it, feeling it, and I cry every day. There’s emotion. I’m not stopping the emotion. I’m letting it come. Like right now, I’m trying to be open to it all,” she says.
When director John Carpenter unleashed his original Halloween in 1978 – starring a teenaged Curtis as a babysitter – he had little idea that it would mark the beginning of arguably the most revered horror franchise in film history.
When the franchise relaunched in 2018 – helmed by David Gordon Green – Halloween shattered box-office records, becoming the franchise’s highest-grossing chapter, setting a new record for the biggest opening weekend for a horror film starring a woman. And, in 2021, Halloween Kills would earn its spot as the biggest opening weekend for any horror film in the pandemic era.
For Curtis, the original Halloween would launch her as a movie icon in her own right.
While she would star in Carpenter’s 1980 horror film The Fog (opposite her mother Janet Leigh), plus a lacklustre 1981 Halloween sequel, she soon shrugged off her scream queen status and refused to be typecast.
Proving adept in both comedy and action drama, Curtis reinvented herself as a consummate leading lady and even a sex symbol, starring in Trading Places, Perfect, A Fish Called Wanda, True Lies, Knives Out and Freaky Friday among many other box office hits, including her unadorned hot dog fingers turn in the recent Everything Everywhere All at Once.
During an illustrious career spanning four decades, Curtis has become so much more than a movie star, parlaying her celebrity into blogging, podcasting and philanthropy. As an activist, she brings support to the oppressed and downtrodden wherever she sees injustice.
A successful author of children’s books, she even patented a modified moisture-proof diaper.
Like her Halloween alter-ego Strode, there’s very little that scares her. “I’m not scared of the little things. I’m scared of fascism; I’m scared of hatred and deep-seated bigotry and racism and homophobia and transphobia and antisemitism; authoritative regimes; oppressive people trying to squash other people because they’re different. That scares me, because it’s very real and it’s happening everywhere right now,” asserts the 63-year-old actress.
In this final chapter, set four years after the events of last year’s Halloween Kills, we find Strode writing her memoir and living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).
After allowing the specter of Myers to determine and drive her reality for decades, she has chosen to liberate herself from fear and rage, and embrace life. But when a young man, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), is accused of killing a boy he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that will force Strode to finally confront the evil she can’t control, once and for all.
Marking his third and final outing directing the present trilogy, director/writer David Gordon Green cannot speak more highly of his muse. “One of the beauties of Jamie Lee is she tells you everything about her and wears the heart on her sleeve; it makes her so relatable and identifiable.
“The beauty of directing her is that she’s so emotionally available that we can do that dance, we can take those chances. She’s not hiding. She’s a fearless, physical and emotional actress. In terms of a collaborator, she’s the dream,” he says.
Curtis didn’t even baulk when Green wrote in a line where Strode – finally blossoming at the notion of pursuing a long-harboured romance with Will Patton’s Officer Hawkins – declares how passion might lead a woman to “rip off her shirt and show off her tits”.
“That was my line,” chuckles Green. “We’re meeting a new version of Laurie in this, and she is expressing herself and so I thought there was a fun charisma there of just her being daring, outgoing… a character that’s just encouraging the world to let go,” he says.
Alas, Strode’s joy is short lived, abruptly yanked back into the painful legacy of her past, and the knowledge that the shadow of Myers will always be there, watching and waiting. “It’s heavy, emotional shit in the middle of a horror movie,” says Curtis, noting how the unfurling events of Halloween Ends distinguishes it from the predecessors.
“The 2018 movie was about trauma and about Laurie and her family coming together. It was a true horror film. Kills was an action movie that felt very heightened. Everything was bigger, louder, darker and more violent. Michael, especially, was more violent. Halloween Ends is very emotional. This is a love story.
“There’s been a lot of fan theories about what the conclusion of the movie is going to be, and I really admire David Gordon Green for his ability to take a big creative swing. It’s the vision of a Halloween movie that is not expected,” she says, comparing this final installment to the last film which ended with the death of Strode’s daughter Karen (Judy Greer).
“That film ended with this loud noise of death and destruction, and you can’t start a new movie that way. You must rest. There has to be an interlude. And so, the movie opens with a really powerful, almost musical moment that is very unexpected. And then the whole movie lays out in that way, and of course, it ends with cymbals crashing and violins playing and drums banging and people screaming, and all that you expect from a Halloween movie, but it’s a different Halloween movie, and I’m very proud of it.”
Is she finally ready to say goodbye?
“Making horror movies is an interesting job,” Curtis offers. “It’s the same as any movie. It’s collaborative. You have hundreds of people gathered together to focus on one moment. But it’s a lot stickier. There’s a lot more blood and there’s a lot more effects, but also emotion, obviously.
“Ends are emotional. Go to an airport anywhere in the world and just sit there and wait. You’re gonna see people sobbing. So, of course it was an emotional experience for me.”
Halloween Ends is in cinemas October 13, 2022
