“Everything Everywhere All at Once” received a leading 11 Oscar nominations this year, including a best supporting actress nod for Jamie Lee Curtis. In this genre-bending film, Curtis portrays the IRS auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdre, the nemesis of Michelle Yeoh’s character, Evelyn Wang.
Upon hearing the news of her nomination, the “Halloween” actress took to social media.
“[Being nominated] was never even in my wildest dream box,” she wrote. “I have always felt very much like an outsider looking in and yet always so grateful for any and all opportunities I have had. Being a part of this beautiful movie, which just received so many acknowledgments for our talented motley crew of artists, is the highlight of my professional life. As this is a movie about a family of immigrants and their struggles through life, immediately I’m thinking of my parents, children of immigrants from Hungary and Denmark, whose families came here and sacrificed for their children to achieve their dreams. I can only imagine what it would feel like for them and their parents to hear that their daughter/granddaughter was nominated this morning for an Oscar. I am stunned and humbled and excited for our little movie that could and did and based on today’s nominations, continues to do and do and do.”
Jamie Lee is the daughter of legendary actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, who both received Oscar nominations in their day for their performances in “Psycho” and “The Defiant Ones” respectively. Jamie Lee’s big break into the business occurred in 1978 with her iconic portrayal of Laurie Strode in the classic horror hit “Halloween.” Now at the age of 64, Curtis reflects, “I have looked at their careers as these incredible things. I’m chop-wood, carry-water girl. I’m a get-your-hands-and-feet-dirty kind of girl. I am in the grit of my life. I don’t look at the season of shining things … I am a realist in every way. I look in the mirror and I see what I look like, and I look like me. They both had that golden age of Hollywood, and therefore I always felt that their careers were impossible to even come near. And when they called my name that day, all of a sudden my parents became my colleagues … I am wide open for it and I’m just so happy I’m having a wonderful, wonderful time.”
But Curtis credits one person alone for her Oscar nomination, and that is Michelle Yeoh. Yeoh’s performance as the stressed-out manager of a laundromat received a nod from the Academy for best actress. “Michelle Yeoh is the reason I am sitting at this desk,” Curtis told Variety. “Michelle Yeoh is the reason that for the rest of my life you will say ‘Oscar-nominated actress Jamie Lee Curtis.’ Michelle Yeoh is the reason that is happening because when my agent called me and said, ‘Jam, there’s this movie. The Daniels.’ I knew the Daniels. And he said, ‘It stars Michelle Yeoh, and you would play her nemesis.’ And I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ He said, ‘No, no, Jamie, you need to read this. It’s out there a little.’ I said, ‘I’ll do it.’”
Written and directed by the creative duo Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, who are up for best director, Curtis champions the film by saying, it’s a “movie that had such humble beginnings, had such beautiful intentions that then were met and grew. And watching this little movie made in 38 days in Simi Valley, California in January of 2020, to see that movie released last April grow and grow and grow and have people all over the world start embracing it; having entire families reunified by it; having an entire culture feel seen and presented in a way that they hadn’t been has just been this beautiful experience.”
