In a stunningly candid interview, Jamie Lee Curtis admits she didn’t understand a single moment of the script for her Oscar-winning role in Everything Everywhere All at Once, revealing how her character’s profound loneliness made the absurd role feel deeply personal.
Jamie Lee Curtis has enjoyed a momentous career in the mainstream film industry, handing in celebrated roles in everything from Halloween and Freaky Friday to True Lies and A Fish Called Wanda. Yet even when considering her remarkable success within the world of entertainment, the 67-year-old actress will be the first to admit when she doesn’t understand a specific film she’s being approached to star in.
Appearing on an episode of CBS News’ 60 Minutes, the iconic actress opened up about many aspects of her career, from her initial days as a leading scream queen of ’70s and ’80s horror to her career resurgence in the 2000s.
Interestingly, one notable topic that came up during Curtis’s interview was her Oscar-winning performance in 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, a role that also won the actress a BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
A topsy-turvy absurdist comedy featuring Michelle Yeoh‘s unfulfilled laundry mat owner saving the multiverse from a god-like version of her daughter, Everything Everywhere All at Once earned universally positive acclaim upon its release in 2022, capturing a total of seven Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture.
As well-received as the finished film turned out to be, Curtis admitted she didn’t fully understand the surreal script for Everything Everywhere All at Once, mainly due to its chaotic nature and conflicting narrative genres.
“Did you understand that role when got it?” CBS asked Curtis about her performance in the film.
“Of course not,” the 67-year-old immediately answered. “Not one second of it. Did I understand that script? No.”
In the film, Curtis appears as the antagonistic IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre, an unhappy bureaucrat auditing Yeoh’s character over her financial status.
While Curtis might not have entirely understood the movie’s script, she did iterate that she personally could relate to her character in the film, pointing to the character’s easily identifiable personality within the movie’s narrative.
“We all know Deirdre,” Curtis summed up. “She’s a woman who’s not loved. She’s a woman who uses her power in her job to control people because she has no love in her life.”
This confession offers a fascinating insight into the actor’s process. For a film as wildly inventive and genre-bending as Everything Everywhere All at Once, the script’s deliberate chaos is a key part of its charm and thematic depth. Curtis’s ability to find a grounded, human core in a character who exists within such a surreal framework is a testament to her masterful craft. She didn’t need to understand the multiverse to understand the universal pain of a woman who feels unseen and unloved.
This candid moment also highlights the unique collaborative nature of the Daniels’ (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) directorial style. Their films often thrive on a “controlled chaos,” where actors are encouraged to find their own truth within the madness. It appears Curtis did just that, channeling a very real human emotion into a character that, on the surface, seems like a one-dimensional villain.
For fans of the film, this revelation adds a new layer of appreciation for Curtis’s performance. Her portrayal of Deirdre is a masterclass in supporting acting—funny, menacing, and ultimately, deeply pitiful. It’s a performance that grounds the film’s cosmic stakes in a very relatable, earthbound reality, proving that even in a movie about infinite universes, the most powerful stories are about the human heart.
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