It was an evening of excessive emotion and virtually fixed tears as crowd-pleasing favourites like Brendan Fraser, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan took house three of the 4 performing awards. The ultimate one went to 64-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis, who referenced her Hollywood icon mother and father: “And my mom and my father have been each nominated for Oscars in several classes. I simply gained an Oscar.” Janet Leigh was nominated for Greatest Supporting Actress herself for Psycho in 1960 and Tony Curtis in 1958 for Greatest Main Actor in The Defiant Ones.” They have been the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton of their day – a glittering couple whose fame and glamour hid a turbulent and damaging house life. Jamie Lee has been fortunately married to Christopher Visitor since 1984 with two youngsters, however even admitted she was a “failed try” to avoid wasting her mother and father’ poisonous marriage.
Jamie has needed to cope with accusations her complete life that she owes a lot of her profession to her well-known identify, beforehand saying: “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 (nepotism) infants is simply designed to attempt to diminish and denigrate and harm.”
She might have had a privileged childhood and sure fast-track entry into Hollywood circles, however the actress has additionally spoken vividly about how onerous and damaging life was for her and her older sister Kathy rising up caught within the brutal and fixed crossfire at house.
And when Tony Curtis died in 2010 he declared in his will: “I acknowledge the existence of my youngsters… and have deliberately and with full data chosen to not present for them on this final will and testomony.”
Curtis and Leigh married in 1961. They have been head over heels in love and he even defied his highly effective studio’s demand that he marry his frequent co-star Piper Laurie.
He stated of his new spouse: “I knew that if she married me, it might be for myself, as a result of she was already a longtime star. It wasn’t as if marrying me was going to do something for her profession.”
Via the last decade they constructed a household and each careers flourished, however it might all come painfully crashing down. Private variations have been magnified by the fixed highlight – one thing each stars courted. Jamie Lee later stated: “Public consideration was crucial to my mother and father. They required that focus during the tip of their lives.”
Curtis stated of the wedding: “No different husband-and-wife group got here near us till Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, however that was 10 years later. They did it by means of scandal. We did it by means of the films and other people’s affection.”
The couple starred collectively in Houdini (1953), The Black Protect of Falworth (1954), The Vikings (1958), The Good Furlough (1958) and Who Was That Woman? (1960). Each loved massively profitable solo careers, with Leigh’s best, most enduring success in 1960’s Psycho.
However behind the scenes, Jamie Lee recalled little or no happiness: “‘There are solely a pair reminders to me that I used to be born from love and never resentment, competitors, jealousy and rancour that are the cornerstones of any disagreeable divorce.”
Curtis stated he felt inferior to his spouse at first: “She, like most individuals I met in Hollywood, had extra self-confidence than I did… I badly needed her to admire me again. She was higher educated than I used to be, and I used to be honoured that she needed to spend time with me.”
Quite a few anecdotes describe Leigh’s public impatience along with her husband’s lack of polish, whether or not failing to gentle a woman’s cigarette or smashing a glass in entrance of Ethel Merman.
Their marriage was in bother by the delivery of their first daughter Kelly in 1956, with Curtis admitting: “I attempted more durable to behave in a approach that did not anger her, and he or she made the identical effort for me. We settled right into a purposeful however unromantic marriage, the type of life that was much less uncommon in Hollywood than you would possibly suppose.”
Curtis was additionally sad his spouse’s profession was extremely regarded whereas he stored being supplied “foolish romances.”
Regardless of being an admitted womaniser himself (together with an affair throughout this marriage with Marilyn Monroe on Some Like It Scorching) he was ceaselessly jealous of any males round his spouse, particularly co-stars. He accused her of an affair with Frank Sinatra and revealed he needed a divorce whereas she was filming The Manchurian Candidate with Previous Blue Eyes in 1960.
Jamie Lee Curtis revealed that she had at all times felt she had been conceived in 1958 as a determined bid to avoid wasting the connection: “Like every other save-the-marriage child, I failed.”
The couple divorced acrimoniously in 1962, with Tony rapidly marrying an 18-year-old co-star Christine Kaufmann. Leigh felt humiliated.
Jamie Lee added: “My mother and father hated one another my complete life. I used to be raised in a home of hatred…
“My mom persevered by means of all of it and survived. I am undecided my sister and I did. There was no Demi [Moore] and Bruce [Willis] amicable divorce or joint household holidays for us. No love was left between them.”
Curtis would have little involvement together with his daughters for many of their lives after which spoke out in frustration about it in the direction of the tip of his life: “There was a very long time after that after I did not get together with my daughters, as a result of I did not see them. Not that Janet was stopping me. I used to be struggling lots. I could not be bothered with anyone.”
Jamie Lee refused to have something to do along with her father till her twenties however finally constructed a cordial however distant relationship. In his closing years, Curtis needed to reconcile together with his two eldest daughters.
In 2008, two years earlier than his demise, he stated: “We’re attending to the purpose the place they notice I am 83, so let’s be mates, however they have to remain out of my life if they arrive in bent and indignant as a result of I left their mom I do not understand how way back. Do not I get an opportunity to be forgiven?”
