Jamie Lee Curtis wins her first Oscar, references movie star parents who never scooped top prize
By Toyin Owoseje, CNN
Jamie Lee Curtis has won her first Oscar, going a step further than her movie star parents who were both nominated for an Academy Award.
The Hollywood actress, who is the famous offspring of “Psycho” star Janet Leigh and “Some Like It Hot” actor Tony Curtis, took home the best actress in a supporting role award at Sunday night’s Oscars for her acclaimed performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
During her emotional speech, Curtis, 64, made sure to remind the world of her Hollywood roots and the fact that her late parents never made it to the podium.
“I know it looks like I’m standing up here by myself, but I am not. I am hundreds of people,” Curtis said, before listing her coworkers on “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” adding: “We just won an Oscar.”
She went on to acknowledge her family, plus fans of the “genre movies” that Curtis has made.
In the concluding moments of her speech, Curtis said: “And my mother and my father were both nominated for Oscars in different categories. I just won an Oscar.”
Leigh was nominated for best actress in a supporting role in 1960 for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” while Tony Curtis received a nomination in 1958 for best actor in a leading role for his performance in “The Defiant Ones.”
In December, Curtis weighed in on the nepotism conversation after Vulture.com dubbed 2022 “The Year of the Nepo Baby” in a series of articles about the privilege of celebrities with famous parents.
“There’s not a day in my professional life that goes by without my being reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars,” she wrote at the time, adding that “the current conversation about nepo babies is just designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt.”
Curtis, whose acting credits include Disney’s “Freaky Friday” and “Halloween,” pointed out that, while she had navigated her decades-long acting career “with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me,” she didn’t agree with the “assumptions and snide remarks that someone related to someone else who is famous in their field for their art, would somehow have no talent whatsoever.”
The mother-of-two added: “I have come to learn that is simply not true.”
Curtis also made light of her “Nepo Baby” moniker at last month’s SAG awards where she won the award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role.
During her speech, she told the audience: “I know you look at me and think ‘nepo baby,’ that’s why she’s there, and I totally get it,” Curtis said. “But the truth of the matter is I’m 64 years old, and this is just amazing.”
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