Getty
"For him to say that was very embarrassing," Curtis recounted, sharing she was just 25 at the time. "As soon as the movie finished, I ended up having some plastic surgery."
Jamie Lee Curtis is opening up about a painful moment early in her career, and the plastic surgery decision she's regretted ever since.
In a candid new interview on 60 Minutes, the Oscar-winning actress revealed that she went under the knife at just 25 years old, after a cinematographer on the 1985 film Perfect allegedly refused to shoot her scenes because of how her face looked on camera.
"He was like, 'I am not shooting her today because her eyes are baggy,'" Curtis recalled. "I was 25. For him to say that was very embarrassing. As soon as the movie finished, I ended up having some plastic surgery."
Curtis, who starred opposite John Travolta in the James Bridges-directed drama, played an aerobics instructor who found herself in the middle of an exposé on fitness clubs. Despite how seriously she took the role, she says the experience with the film's cinematographer left her deeply shaken.
"I took it very seriously as an actor," she said. "It was a real movie with a real director, and I was working hard. And then to be told that you're not shootable ... I didn't know what to do."
When asked how the procedure turned out, Curtis admitted, "not well."
"That's just not what you want to do when you're 25 or 26," she continued. "I regretted it immediately and have regretted it since."
Even more so now, Curtis said, as she's become an advocate for women aging gracefully and embracing their natural beauty.
Getty
Jamie Lee Curtis Calls Out Colin Farrell at SAG Awards For Giving Him Covid
View Story"I regret it way so now because I've become a really public advocate to women to say, 'You're gorgeous and perfect the way you are.' It was not a good thing for me to do," she added. "They give you painkillers. I became very enamored with the warm bath of an opioid. Drank a little bit. I was very quiet and private about it. But it became a dependency for sure."
Curtis, now 26 years sober, has been open about her past struggles with addiction and the journey it took to get clean.
In a 2019 interview with Variety, she shared how her sobriety influenced her time on set, particularly when it came to making Freaky Friday.
"I was probably about nine months sober when I made Freaky Friday," Curtis recounted. "I put a big sign up by the catering truck, and it said, 'Recovery meeting in Jamie’s trailer every day.' I left the door open and didn't know if anybody would show up. We ended up calling it the Mobile Home Recovery Meeting. It was probably my favorite grouping of sobriety that I’ve ever participated in. I've participated in groups all over the world, but there was something about the cross section of ages and genders and jobs and races, and it was profound."
