Jamie Lee Curtis: I “Wouldn’t Have a Career” Without Halloween

Jamie Lee Curtis first played Laurie Strode in Halloween in 1978, and the movie kickstarted a whole franchise that’s still beloved today. Over the years, Curtis starred in Halloween II, made a sneaky voice cameo in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, starred in Halloween H20, and appeared in Halloween: Resurrection before coming back for David Gordon Green’s newest trilogy. Halloween was released in 2018 and Halloween Kills came out last year, and now Curtis is saying goodbye to Laurie and Michael Myers in Halloween Ends, which is coming out next week. This weekend, Curtis appeared at a New York Comic-Con panel for Halloween Ends and talked about her career.

“No matter what I do – whatever the f*ck I do forever – Laurie Strode is because of you and I thank you,” Curtis told the crowd on Saturday (via Variety). “Endings are a bitch, but so is Laurie Strode,” Curtis added, getting emotional. “At this point, Jamie and Laurie have become woven together. There is no separation … I don’t have anything in my life without Laurie Strode. Nothing. I wouldn’t have a career, I wouldn’t have a family.”

Why Did Jamie Lee Curtis Return For Halloween (2018)?

“Well, I’m 62 years old, and I played Laurie Strode the first time when I was 19,” Curtis explained to ComicBook.com before the release of Halloween Kills last year. “And I never thought we would do another one. And every step of the way I haven’t thought we would do another one. So for me to say goodbye is not something I would ever do. I will say goodbye when I’m dead. I am a freelance actor, which means I am quote ‘unemployed.’ So the truth is, I have other things I’m doing, but I will never say goodbye.”

She continued, “It will be hard to imagine a circumstance that happened the organic way that this one did from an email from this one to this one on September 7th, 2016 at 8:37 PM, Los Angeles time, saying, ‘Moonshot ‘Halloween’ question mark, full creative control, Carpenter doing the score. Is this a sandbox you would play in?’ And five years and a month later, and many hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. Millions of fans around the world are now reinventing, I mean, reassociating with Laurie and Michael. And so to say goodbye? No. Can I imagine another magical scenario? No. But I never thought I’d be here. The last thing in the world I thought I would have done again is another Halloween movie, the last thing. If Jake Gyllenhaal hadn’t called me and said, ‘Hey, my friend David would like to talk to you about a Halloween movie.’ I was like, ‘Okay, Jake.’ And then David called me, but that was after the original email between them. That was way after.”

Halloween Ends lands in theaters and on Peacock on October 14th.