Jamie Lee Curtis Talks Returning for ‘Halloween’

Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her most iconic role in 40-years-later sequel Halloween for both a sense of completion and as a “palette cleanser.”

Curtis, who first played terrorized babysitter Laurie Strode in the 1978 original Halloween, reprised the role in 1981’s Halloween II and again in both 1998’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, which killed off the traumatized Laurie Strode — and the original iteration of the franchise — for good.

“The truth of the matter is I did Halloween II because it picked up exactly where Halloween left off,” Curtis told Halloween Movies.

Scream Queen

“In that version of the storytelling I felt I owed it to the people who loved the original movie, in that it picks up the second the [first] one ends. Even though other people didn’t join in, I felt that as the face of the movie that it was my responsibility, but I also recognized by then, I had already done [horror films] Prom Night, Terror Train, kind of a bad thriller called Road Games in Australia, and then Halloween II,” she explained of her career as a Scream Queen.

“I knew, if I knew anything, that it was time to say, ‘No more.’ It had nothing to do with the genre and it had nothing to do with the pejorative attached. It literally had to do with, if I wanted to do anything else, I wouldn’t get the opportunity, because the pigeon hole would be cemented closed, and I felt that Halloween II was the way to end that.”

Halloween Returns

Curtis then went on to find further success in Eddie Murphy-Dan Aykroyd comedy Trading Places, John Cleese crime-comedy A Fish Called Wanda, and James Cameron-directed action-comedy True Lies, where she starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Of the horror genre, of which she’s an admitted nonfan, she said, “I kind of never want back to it.”

When the 20th anniversary for the original Halloween inched near and Curtis realized she and Halloween director John Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill were still active in show business, the actress floated to the filmmakers the idea of returning to the iconic slasher franchise.

Final Confrontation

“So H20 was conceived and there was a moment where John was going to direct it, but then he had other commitments and I ended up, kind of again, being the only representative,” Curtis said.

“But the idea of that movie was to kind of complete the story. But of course, with the Halloween movies there’s a completion and then there’s a ‘completion’. You know, the word ‘completion’ has many interpretations. I wanted a concrete ending. [In H20] when Laurie has that axe in her hand, she is saying [to Michael], ‘It’s you or me, because I’m not running anymore.’ For me, that was a very important moment and a very important completion,” Curtis explained.

The reunion movie saw scarred alcoholic Laurie Strode — also a mother of one in that continuity — facing off against brother Michael Myers twenty years after the events of Halloween night in 1978 (explored in Halloween and Halloween II), ultimately triumphing over the boogeyman when she decapitates him with an axe. 

The Death of Laurie Strode

“But of course what we learned, which by the way was not the original intention, was that it was not Michael, but an innocent man that she had killed,” Curtis said of revelations brought forth by Halloween: Resurrection.

That film undid the finality of Michael’s death at Laurie’s hands by explaining the mute murderer had crushed the throat of a hapless paramedic, using the victim as an unwitting double so that Michael could escape.

“So what I said to them was, ‘If this is in fact how we are going to conclude the movie, without the audience knowing, then I have to come back for one more movie, for a very short moment to conclude Laurie’s story. I’m not going to make H20 ambiguous,’” she added.

“That was for me the reason I was in Halloween: Resurrection. I thought H20 was the correct thing to do at the time, I liked it, then I had to be in that other thing just to conclude the story, and then I truly thought I would not return to this.”

The Return of Laurie Strode

Curtis returned for Resurrection to fulfill a contractual obligation. That movie found Laurie institutionalized as result of her beheading of an innocent man, but nonetheless ready and waiting for Michael: when he attacks her again to finish her off, he finally succeeds, stabbing her and dropping her off the institution’s roof.

Then Curtis got a call from Halloween director and co-writer David Gordon Green luring her back to finish what she helped start in a direct sequel to the original, which would come from producers John Carpenter and Blumhouse.

Halloween Retold

“They started to pitch me and I said, ‘No, no, just send it to me,’ and I read it and I thought that it was a very clever, modern way of referencing Halloween. It’s not a reboot, it is a re-telling,” Curtis said of this new installment that ignores the six direct sequels that followed the 1978 original.

“It’s a very interesting take on the movie because it references Halloween in every way it can, stylistically, character-wise, visually, emotionally, it follows very similar themes,” Curtis said. “But it’s its own movie, so it’s a very clever mash-up. When you see what they’ve come up with you’ll go, ‘Wow,’ because it’s a very modern and very true [take on the mythology].”

Everyone Is Entitled To One Good Scare

And of picking up Laurie Strode four decades later — the hardened survivor is now an armed-and-ready mother (to Judy Greer’s Karen) and grandmother (to Andi Matichak’s Allyson) who warns of Michael Myers’ (Nick Castle, James Jude Courtney) return to Haddonfield, filling a similar role to now-dead Michael Myers psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) — Curtis called the return a “wistful” one.

“We look in the mirror and the passage of time is happening. We can’t stop it. So it’s wistful, simply because of that passage of time, but as a franchise it’s also this beautiful old growth, which can branch off into a new ways,” Curtis said.

“It’s a new generation for this movie, so there will be many young people who will only know [1978’s] Halloween and this one. They may not have followed the whole franchise. So for me, it’s like a palate cleanser.”

Halloween opens October 19th.