LOS ANGELES — Jamie Lee Curtis comes from a strong acting lineage and now she has brought home an Oscar for her family.
Curtis paid homage to her Oscar-nominated parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, after she won best supporting actress for her role as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the blockbuster indie film “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” She plays an IRS agent who has several guises through different timelines in the multiverse.
The veteran actor made her long-waited first Oscar nomination count.
“My mother and my father were both nominated for Oscars in different categories,” Curtis said, beginning to cry as she accepted the award. “I just won an Oscar!”
When Curtis was asked backstage if her parents are proudly looking down on her, the actor offered some serious candor in her response.
“I don't believe in a world where people are looking down on us,” she said. “I think we are them in our actions, in our deeds and in our ideas. We build our own. We give them to our children, and that's how the world goes on. I am a product of them. I am a proud product of them. I know they would be incredibly proud of me.”
Has Jamie Lee Curtis won an Oscar before?
Curtis’ nomination comes more than 60 years after her mother was nominated for her supporting acting work in “Psycho.” Her father received a nod in 1959 in the best actor category for “The Defiant Ones.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, 64, became the eighth oldest in the category’s history to win. She surpassed Judi Dench, who held the slot for her role in “Shakespeare in Love.”
Not bad for Curtis who had all but resigned herself to the idea that she was not going to be nominated for an Oscar in her career. The actor wore a face of surprise when she found out about her nomination in an photo she later posted on Instagram.
Curtis has starred in a number of films including the “Halloween” franchise movies starting in 1978, along with other notable projects such as “Trading Places,” “My Girl,” “True Lies,” “A Fish Called Wanda,” “Freaky Friday” and “Knives Out.” But it was her performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that ultimately landed her in the Oscars’ record books.
“To all the people who supported the genre of movies I've made for all these years — the thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together,” Curtis shouted as she raised her trophy.
Last month, Curtis won at the SAG Awards for best supporting actress.
Curtis beat Angela Bassett, Kerry Condon, Hong Chau and Stephanie Hsu in the category.