Life Lessons from Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis

This interview with Jamie Lee Curtis popped up in my inbox the other day and I had to share. I know I have a really diverse group of women who stop by here to read this blog – HI 🙂 …from teens and twenty-somethings to women in their 50’s, ’60’s, and ’70s and beyond, and I love that. I think we all need to learn from those who have come before us and those who have paved the way because their wisdom is gold, but there is plenty to learn from younger generations too. If we are open to all there is in life, we can become more of who we are and shape who we want our future selves to be, no matter our age.

It has been 40 years since award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis made her film debut in the critically-acclaimed Halloween and she hasn’t slowed down since. Jamie Lee, about to celebrate her 60th birthday, sits down with Good Housekeeping for its October issue (on newsstands September 11) to share her secrets on living life to the fullest, being confident in your own skin and becoming the happiest version of yourself at any age. ~ GH

Below are my favorite happy-life secrets from Jamie, everyone from millennials to grandmothers can tap for a life full of more satisfying (and funny) moments.

Wash your own car.

A little sweat now will earn you a rewarding rest later. “I’m a hard worker. I’m a hustler,” says Jamie Lee. “I like to invent things, and I like elbow grease. I wash my own car — why have other people do it while I sit on a bench watching them? I want sweat equity. I want it in my mothering, I want it in my marital-ing, I want it in my family-ing, I want it in my friend-ing. You tell me you’re moving, I will show up on moving day. There will be a point where I want to relax and not worry so much about my sweat equity — when I’ve earned my rest.”

Let it go.

“I am a constant editor. I shed people, I shed clothing, I shed possessions, I shed ideas. The biggest thing I’ve shed is my own limitations and perception of who I am. How can I expect my agent to think of me in a different way if I don’t think of me in a different way? Is he going to wake up and say, ‘That Jamie Lee is smart — she should write a screenplay’? Not going to happen! It has to come from me. And even if I stumble in my pursuit, that’s OK. We are all looking for a fast track to enlightenment, but it’s sweat equity, sweat equity, sweat equity.” Perhaps her biggest reinvention: “I got sober 20 years ago. That was a massive reemergence.”

Don’t look in the mirror.

“I don’t know if men wake up, look in the mirror and hate themselves. Most women do. So I have a big secret: I don’t look in the mirror. I’m a 60-year-old woman. I am not going to look the same as I used to, and I don’t want to be confronted by that every day! When I get out of the shower, I have a choice: I can dry myself off looking in the mirror, or I can dry myself off with my back to it. I turn my back to the mirror, and I feel great! I don’t want women to hate themselves, because I think women are extraordinary.”

Volunteer your talents.

“All people kissing 60 have a deep well of experience to offer others,” says Jamie Lee, who suggests that people of all ages volunteer at schools: “If you’re a baker, bring your baking skills. If you’re a dressmaker, bring your sewing skills. If you garden, plant a vegetable garden and work with the teachers on sustainability. It’s too easy to sit back and look at screens and see life passing us by. Get sweaty. We can never say we’ve done enough.”

She is the living embodiment of her life philosophy: If not now, when? “On the very clear passage of 50s to 60s, I have no time to waste,” she says. “None. If you have creative ideas and you don’t bring them out into the world in some way before you go, that is a tragedy.”

I totally agree

* Read the full interview in the October 2018 issue of Good Housekeeping.