Jamie Lee Curtis receives Lifetime Achievement Award in Venice

Jamie Lee Curtis has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival. Her speech is guaranteed to give you goosebumps!

Jamie Lee Curtis highlighted the surprising real-world relevance of her hotly anticipated horror sequel “Halloween Kills” when she met the international press Wednesday ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival.

In the new film, Curtis reprises the role that began her career 43 years ago in John Carpenter’s horror classic “Halloween” (1978), bringing back to the screen her iconic character Laurie Strode as she’s once again pursued by the merciless and purely malevolent.

Curtis, the daughter of ‘50s-era Hollywood, royalty Janet Leigh (“Psycho”) and the Hungarian origin Tony Curtis (“Some Like It Hot”), was 18 when she made her film debut in the now-classic “Halloween”. As the teenage babysitter, Laurie Strode she alone survived a massacre by knife-wielding masked sociopath Michael Myers.

“I have played the same character for 43 years,” Curtis, 62, noted. “I think that’s unprecedented.” Michael Myers. Produced by Blumhouse and distributed by Universal, the film is a sequel to director David Gordon Green’s franchise reviver “Halloween” (2018), which proved an enormous success, earning $255 million from a reported production budget of just $10 million to $15 million.

Curtis said she believed the 2018 film was such a hit because of the way Green and his co-writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems sought to “go deeper” with the film’s story and its relationship with real-world events. “It was prescient because what David and Dan and company figured out was that we were on the verge of a wave of women coming into their own understanding of trauma.”

She attributed the film’s resonance to this “collision” between her character’s trauma and strength in the face of brutality with the growing momentum of the #MeToo movement at the time. Curtis went on to add that she suspected “Halloween Kills” might benefit from a similar sensitivity to its times.

“There’s a line in “Halloween Kills” that goes, “The system is broken”, she explained. “Well, you know, the system is broken all over the world and people are rising up all over the world in collective rage against the machine and unjust systems.” She marveled over how Green’s storytelling, “prescience has continued,” joking that she’d like to go with him to Las Vegas sometime because she would “probably win a shitload of money.”

Curtis stunned fans when she went up to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice International Film Festival Wednesday. A fan caught the iconic horror film actress, 62, stripping off her shoes as she ran onstage to accept the prestigious honor. Talking about the memorable moment on social media after the ceremony, the “Halloween Kills” star wrote, “I accepted my Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement with these words which I attempted to deliver in Italian.

‘Thank you again for this great honor. I dedicate it to the victims and survivors of violence. All types. Physical. Political. Spiritual. Sexual. Psychological. Cultural. Emotional, Domestic, and the violence and hatred of discrimination against ANY and ALL who dare to have their own ideas and minds. I proudly accept this tonight with a clear, sober mind of my own and with an open and incredibly grateful heart.’ “

Of Green’s forthcoming third and final Halloween film, “Halloween Ends”, Curtis said she had just read the script for the first time on the flight to Venice, teasing that it “amplifies” the first two movies’ themes “on a sort of existential level.” Although the actress is very talented in this kind of movie, she doesn’t like horror movies.

“But I hate these movies. I loathe them. I do not like to be frightened. So it’s a natural talent — that genuine emotional connection to being afraid. You’re watching that happen on screen.”

“Halloween Kills” is scheduled for release in the U.S. on Oct. 15, after having been delayed by a full year by the pandemic. Green’s franchise closer, “Halloween Ends”, is currently pegged for October 2022.

Source: Wionews, Hollywood Reporter, NyPost