- Jamie Lee Curtis said the best thing she can do for her legacy is to remain sober.
- The actress spoke about sobriety with Colin Farrell for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series.
- Curtis said maintaining sobriety would stop a “generational issue in my biological family.”
Jamie Lee Curtis said she wants her legacy to show that she maintained her sobriety from drugs.
In a conversation with Colin Farrell for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series published Saturday, Curtis discussed how staying sober could impact her legacy not just as an actress, but as a person.
The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star has been open about her former addiction to painkillers, which she became dependent on after getting minor plastic surgery in 1989. Curtis has been sober for more than 23 years.
When asked by Farrell if she wonders about her legacy, Curtis got emotional and said she often thinks about how it intertwines with her sobriety.
“Being sober is going to be a legacy, for sure. Because you’re stopping what has been a generational issue in my biological family. It will be the single greatest thing I do, if I can stay sober. I mean, without question,” she said. “Because generations of people have had their lives ruled and ruined by alcoholism and drug addiction. For me, sobriety first. Always.”
The actress later told Ferrell she believes legacy is about “making friends, loving your people really well, and bring art here.”
While promoting her film “Halloween Ends” in October, Curtis told BuzzFeed that “addiction is a motherfucker” that has “killed and continues to kill, regardless of gender, race, socioeconomic privilege, or lack thereof.” She then compared her former addiction to the “Halloween” franchise villain Michael Myers.
“In ‘Halloween Ends,’ we think Michael Myers has disappeared at the beginning of the movie. We say it: ‘He’s disappeared!’ Well, addiction never disappears. It is right here,” she said. “It’s like the little cartoons of the devil and the angel on your shoulders. That’s addiction. It’s right there at all times. I’m afraid of it. And I am trying very hard, on a daily basis, to keep it away.”