Jamie Lee Curtis, Who 'Sold Yogurt that Makes You !@#$,' Is Just Happy To Be Included

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | September 10, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | September 10, 2024 |

This past weekend Jamie Lee Curtis took home the Creative Arts Emmy award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series thanks to her role as complicated matriarch Donna Berzatto in The Bear, and she beat out heavy-hitters Olivia Colman and Maya Rudolph to boot.

Fans have loved Curtis’s layered, raw portrayal of Donna and her struggle to maintain relationships with her adult children in episodes like “Fishes,” in which she hosts her extended family for a chaotic Christmas dinner, and “Ice Chips,” in which she helps her daughter through the birth of her first child. In the latter episode, Donna was her daughter’s last resort, after no one else answered her frantic call when she went into labor, but Donna was elated and grateful to be included in the occasion regardless. Curtis feels the same way about her win.

“It’s astonishing that I got this opportunity at this point in my life,” she said in her acceptance speech, crediting all of the cast and crew as “the ingredients of this beautiful, beautiful piece of television…that I’m privileged to be in.”

“I’m the luckiest girl in the world,” she continued. “I’ve been an actor since I was 19. I’m 65 … I’ve sold yogurt that makes you shit for seven years. And I just never thought in my life that I would get to do work at this level of depth and complexity and intelligence. And it’s just been the thrill of my creative life these last couple of years that I get these opportunities. So I’m humble and incredibly grateful.”

Another one of those recent creative opportunities was her role in Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film of equal emotional depth and complexity to any episode of The Bear, which she won a slew of awards for. But she’s been a working actress her whole life, and one of those faces you get used to seeing everywhere. Like laxative yogurt commercials. “I’ve done a lot of weird stuff because I just love the process,” she explained of her approach to her career. “And to me, the perseverance and patience and belief in yourself…this is an industry filled with rejection. You are rejected every day, every day when you’re an actor. And to be 65 years old and having this happen is extraordinary.”

Curtis is, of course, no stranger to the ins and outs of the industry, as she was raised in it by her parents, actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, but that hasn’t meant she’s enjoyed movie star-level success her whole career. So, in an industry that doesn’t exactly celebrate women of her age, her recent success feels deserved, and I’m happy to watch.