Jamie Lee Curtis has accomplished an awful lot since making her screen debut in 1977, but she’ll always be best remembered for her very first feature film appearance one year later. John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of the greatest, most important and influential horror movies ever made, with Laurie Strode comfortably up there among the genre’s biggest icons.
When Halloween Kills finally comes to theaters twelve months behind schedule in October, Curtis will have played the role in every decade since the 1970s, which is a phenomenal achievement and a sign of how huge her presence has been across not just the franchise, but the entire history of the slasher film.
The two-time Golden Globe winner seems committed to the idea that next year’s Halloween Ends will be her final outing as Laurie, but in a new interview she revealed that one scene from filming David Gordon Green’s 2018 hybrid of sequel and reboot stands out as perhaps the high point of her long and distinguished career.
“When I was making the 2018 Halloween, the last scene of the movie that I had to shoot was a moment where Laurie Strode is sitting alone in a pickup truck, watching Michael Myers headed to a supermax prison where he will spend the rest of his life. And she is seeing this person who has caused her 40 years of trauma being taken away. And the scene was just me alone in a truck. When we went to shoot it, it’s just my little truck with about 14 cameras around it and cranes and lights and a crew. I was in my trailer preparing for my work, which was going to be emotional, cathartic. It was described as a moment where Laurie sort of replays the 40 years since this first occurred.
I’m someone who likes name tags because everybody knows my name, but often I don’t know anyone else’s. And so, whenever I start any project, I ask for everybody to wear a name tag. And this was now the end of the movie. This is me shooting my last scene before I was going to fly home to be back with my family. And when I approached the set, the entire crew were standing in silent solidarity with their hands behind their backs. And everyone was wearing a name tag. And the name tag said, ‘We are Laurie Strode’. What they were saying was, ‘We are with you, Jamie, in this moment. And we know there’s nothing we can do to help you as you do this moment of work alone in a pickup truck. We believe in you, because we are you’. I gotta tell you, that may be the high point of my career.”
Looking at the critical, commercial and awards success Curtis has experienced and enjoyed throughout her 40+ years in the industry, if she’s calling her final scene from Halloween the one that tops them all, then you can only imagine how high the emotions were on set.
It’s one of the most powerful moments in the film, because you can feel the weight lifting off Laurie’s shoulders when she believes she’s finally vanquished the looming threat that’s dominated her entire life, at least until Halloween Kills arrives in less than six weeks.
