Jamie Lee Curtis was the center of attention at tonight’s SAG Awards, causing quite a stir after boasting of herself as a “fake baby” multiple times. While accepting her award for Best Supporting Actress Everything everywhere at oncethe star brought the audience to tears with a stunning speech – proving that, yes, Jamie Lee is all of us.
The rousing Hollywood event kicked off with a montage of actors sharing their stories that led to their fame (and, in turn, their SAG membership), including Curtis.
“I got my SAG card when I was 19 years old when I signed a seven-year contract with Universal Studios and starred in an ABC TV series called Operation Petticoat‘ said Curtis, adding, ‘where my father, Tony Curtis – nepo baby! – played in. I got fired from that TV show a year later and I thought my life was over.
As we all know, Curtis’ acting career was far from over as she starred in John Carpenter’s horror classic. Halloweenand more recently, awards darling Everything everywhere at once. Curtis won Sunday night’s awards ceremony for playing cantankerous IRS agent Deirdre in the action comedy A24, while also being nominated against co-star Stephanie Hsu.
After yelling “shut up!” and while kissing movie star Michelle Yeoh on the mouth, Curtis took the stage to loud cheers from her peers’ room. But she was having none of it: “Come on!” she shouted, winning more love from the crowd. “Well, I didn’t mean ‘come on’ anymore, I meant ‘come on’ as a stop,” she joked.
“I’m wearing the wedding ring my dad gave my mom,” Curtis continued. ‘They hated each other anyway. But my sister Kelly and I were born of love. My father was from Hungary and my mother from Denmark. They had nothing and they became these monstrous stars in this industry that they loved so much. My parents were actors.”
Jamie Lee, the daughter of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, has been open in recent months about her disdain for the recent nepotism discourse. In a post on Instagram, Curtis said New York magazine‘s polarizing fake baby article was “designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt.”
However, now the actress has a bit of a sense of humor about the whole affair, though she still fights back.
“I know you look at me and think, well, Nepo baby. That’s why she’s there.’ And I totally get it,” said Curtis as she accepted her first SAG Award. “But the truth is that I am 64 years old and this is just amazing.”
While some thought Curtis would split the vote with Hsu, which led to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever actress Angela Bassett’s awards season leading up to the Oscars in two weeks, this win propels the Academy Awards toward Everything Everywhere Everything at once. The race for Best Supporting Actress is more exciting than ever…can Angela Bassett does the thing?