We’ve all had it where parents forbade us from doing cool stuff, whether that was going to a party or eating McDonald’s at the drive-through because “we have food at home.” And, as it turns out, having a mother who’s a Hollywood movie star doesn’t make them any less of a stickler for the rules, as Jamie Lee Curtis found out when she was thirteen years old.
The then-teenager and budding child star hoped to follow in mother Janet Leigh’s footsteps by starring in the horror movie The Exorcist. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Curtis recalled how her mother put her foot down.”When I was 13 years old, [a producer] called my mother and said, ‘Will you let Jamie audition for a movie?’” she explained. “My mother said, ‘No.’ The movie was The Exorcist.”
Although Curtis missed her chance to audition as Regan MacNeil, that didn’t stop her from watching the flick once it came out in 1973. “We had a house that had a screening capability and we screened The Exorcist for my fifteenth birthday, for my friends,” Curtis said. “It scared me so badly that my friends would taunt me in school.”
Still, Curtis wasn’t spooked enough to be deterred from playing Laurie Strode five years later in slasher movie Halloween. Her time as the character concluded in 2022 movie Halloween Ends, but if you want to see what other scares might be in store this year, check out our guide to all the new movies coming your way in 2024.