The time period “nepo child” has been catching on for the previous 12 months or so, as younger social media customers grow to be more and more conscious of what number of figures within the leisure trade have well-known mother and father—and as stars with well-known mother and father get extra questions concerning the extent to which familial ties have given them a leg up. Some so-called nepo infants have downplayed these ties… however not Jamie Lee Curtis. The Oscar nominee and and freshly-minted SAG Award winner for finest supporting actress, for her flip as Deirdre in A24’s Every part All over the place All at As soon as, has made a degree of leaning into her Hollywood pedigree, mentioning her well-known mother and father at a number of stops alongside the marketing campaign path this awards season.
“I do know you have a look at me and suppose, Nicely, nepo child, that’s why she’s there, and I completely get it,” mentioned Curtis whereas accepting her SAG Award Sunday night time. “However the fact of the matter is: I’m 64 years previous, and that is simply superb.”
Curtis was born in 1958 to Hollywood royalty Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Tony Curtis, née Bernard Schwartz, was the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants; he went on to grow to be a serious movie actor, starring in classics like Candy Odor of Success and Some Like It Scorching. Janet Leigh’s maternal grandparents immigrated from Denmark, and she or he too went on to grow to be one in all Hollywood’s brightest starlets, starring in Bye Bye Birdie, The Manchurian Candidate, and most famously, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Curtis and Leigh divorced in 1962.
“I’m sporting the marriage ring that my father gave my mom. They hated one another, by the way in which, on the finish of the entire thing,” Curtis mentioned onstage on the SAGs. “However my sister Kelly [Curtis] and I have been born from love. My father was from Hungary and my mom was from Denmark, and so they had nothing, and so they grew to become these monstrous stars on this trade.”
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When nepotism discourse reached a fever pitch in December of final 12 months—because of New York’s “Yr of the Nepo Child” cowl story—Curtis appeared miffed by the time period, which she mentioned was designed to “diminish and denigrate and damage.” On the time, Curtis posted a photograph of herself as a toddler together with her older sister Kelly and their mother and father. “I’ve been knowledgeable actress since I used to be 19 years previous in order that makes me an OG Nepo Child,” reads the caption. “I’ve by no means understood, nor will I, what qualities received me employed that day, however since my first two traces on Quincy as a contract participant at Common Studios to this final spectacular artistic 12 months some 44 years later, there’s not a day in my skilled life that goes by with out my being reminded that I’m the daughter of film stars. The present dialog about nepo infants is simply designed to attempt to diminish and denigrate and damage.”
Within the ensuing weeks, although, Curtis has appeared to embrace her “nepo child” standing, making a degree to carry up the precise time period a number of instances alongside the marketing campaign path. Curtis choked again tears in a latest dialog with Self-importance Truthful’s David Canfield on our Little Gold Males podcast, drawing a parallel between her mom making Psycho and her personal profession starring within the Halloween franchise.
“I’ve adopted—nepo child!—in my mother and father’ footsteps. In my mom’s case, actually adopted her,” Curtis instructed Canfield. “But their fame and success was all the time—to me, their stardom on the time was so ginormous that despite the fact that I’ve had incredible success, I by no means thought I’d attain their degree. That was by no means even—I imply, simply not even.”
On Little Gold Males, Curtis additionally made a degree to notice that each her mother and father got here from “nothing.”
“My father being raised on the streets of New York by a tailor who immigrated from Hungary, and my mom being raised in Stockton, California by immigrants from Denmark,” she mentioned. “Each of them discovered their technique to the highest of the pile of this trade, and each of them have been nominated for Oscars. And rapidly they have been my mother and father, and so they have been welcoming me.” Curtis went on to say that her household lineage was the “absolute very first thing that [she considered” after receiving the information that she had acquired her first profession Oscar nomination. “How thrilled my grandparents can be, how thrilled my mother and father can be for this second for his or her daughter.”
