When Jamie Lee Curtis became a mom, she knew her acting career had to change.
After having a storied career as an actor, Curtis decided to transition to selling stuff in commercials — from Hertz rental cars, her first advertising gig, to becoming the spokesperson for Activia in the 2010s.
“My agents and lawyers and many friends questioned why I would do such a thing when I was still acting in things and pretending to be other people,” she told an engaged crowd Monday at the Amazon Port during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
“I was trying to stay home with my kid,” she explained.
Curtis and her husband, Christopher Guest, adopted two children after dealing with infertility issues.
Doing advertisements for brands such as L’eggs pantyhose, Hitachi, and a regional phone carrier, Voice Stream Wireless, which eventually became T-Mobile, meant Curtis spent less time on movie sets and more time raising her girls, Annie and Ruby, who are now adults.
The actor noted that despite hesitations from her team about what starring in commercials would do to her film career, she’d still go on to star in blockbuster films such as 2018’s “Halloween,” 2019’s “Knives Out,” and 2022’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” for which she earned a supporting actress Oscar award for playing IRS auditor, Deirdre Beaubeirdre.
“I sold yogurt that makes you shit for six years and I won an Oscar,” she told moderator, Sue Kroll, the head of global marketing at Amazon MGM Studios. “I believe that that crossover has now happened. We can advertise and pretend simultaneously. There has been a paradigm shift in the way we as consumers take on our content, and there is no stigma anymore.”
Curtis’s next project is an adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s novels for a Prime Video series titled “Scarpetta.” The show stars Nicole Kidman as a medical examiner. Both Curtis and Kidman are executive producers.
