Curtis was born in Los Angeles, California, the child of well-known actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Her parents divorced in 1962 and her mother remarried to Robert Brandt. She has an older sister, Kelly Curtis, who is also an actress, and several half-siblings (all from her father's remarriage), Alexandra, Allegra, Ben, and Nicholas Curtis (who died in 1994 of a drug overdose).

Curtis attended both Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills High School, but graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall. She returned to California in 1976. She attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where she considered majoring in social work, but left after a semester in order to pursue an acting career. Universal Studios put her under contract, and she starred in the television series Operation Petticoat.

Career

Film

Curtis made her debut in the classic 1978 horror film Halloween, playing the role of Laurie Strode, the only teenage character in the film who is not killed. The film was a major success and was considered the highest grossing independent film of its time, and has earned a classic status as a horror film. Curtis was subsequently cast in several horror films, which led to her association with the horror genre, garnering her the title of a "scream queen". It's been stated that the filmmakers had no clue who her parents were at the time they cast her.

In one of her most well known roles as Laurie Strode, a babysitter being stalked by a maniac on Halloween, in Halloween

Her first follow-up to Halloween was the horror film, The Fog, which was directed by "Halloween" director John Carpenter. The film opened in February 1980 to mixed reviews but strong box office,^[1] further cementing Curtis as a horror film starlet. Her next film, Prom Night, was a low-budget Canadian slasher film and was released in July 1980. The film, for which she earned a Genie Award nomination for Best Performance by a Foreign Actress, was considered similar in style to Halloween, and received negative reviews which marked it as a disposable entry in the then active "slasher film" genre. That year, Curtis also starred in Terror Train, which opened in October and received a negative reaction akin to Prom Night. Both films performed only moderately at the box office.^[2] Curtis had a similar function in both films - playing the main character whose friends are murdered, and who is practically the only protagonist to survive. Film critic Roger Ebert, who had given negative reviews to all three of Curtis' 1980 films, said that Curtis "is to the current horror film glut what Christopher Lee was to the last one-or Boris Karloff was in the 1930s."^[3]. Curtis later appeared in Halloween II, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and Halloween: Resurrection.

Her role in 1983's Trading Places established her as more than just a horror queen and 1988's A Fish Called Wanda achieved near cult status -- while showcasing her as a first rate comic actress. She won a Golden Globe for her work in 1994's True Lies.

Her recent successful film roles include Disney's Freaky Friday (2003), opposite Lindsay Lohan. The movie was filmed at Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California, near where Curtis and Guest make their home with their children. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy in this movie.

In October 2006, Curtis told Access Hollywood that she has closed the book on her acting career to focus on family.

[edit] Television

Curtis made her TV debut in an episode of Columbo, but got her first major role co-starring with Richard Lewis in the situation comedy Anything But Love. Her role as Hannah Miller received both a Golden Globe and People's Choice Award. She also earned a Golden Globe nomination for her work in TNT's adaptation of the Wendy Wasserstein play The Heidi Chronicles. More recently, Curtis starred in the CBS television movie Nicholas' Gift, for which she received an Emmy nomination. Curtis also appeared in the science fiction series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

[edit] Children's books

Working with illustrator Laura Cornell, Curtis has written a number of critically-acclaimed children's books. These include:

• When I was Little: A Four-Year Old's Memoir Of Her Youth, published September 1993.
• Tell Me Again About The Night I was Born, published August 1996.
• Today I Feel Silly, and Other Moods That Make My Day, published September 1998, which was listed on the New York Times best-seller list for nine weeks.
• Where Do Balloons Go?: An Uplifting Mystery, published August 2000.
• I'm Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem, published September 2002.
• It's Hard to Be Five: Learning How to Work My Control Panel, published September 2004.
• Is There Really A Human Race?, published September 2006.

[edit] Private life

Curtis married actor Christopher Guest on December 18, 1984, becoming Lady Haden-Guest when her husband inherited the Barony of Haden-Guest in 1996, upon the death of his father. The couple have two adopted children, Anne Haden Guest (born 1986) and Thomas Haden Guest (born 1996). Both are entitled to use the honorific The Honourable before their names, because of a Royal Warrant dated 30 April 2004 that addressed the status of adopted children of peers. However, the Haden-Guest title will be inherited by Christopher Guest's heir presumptive, his younger brother, Nicholas, since a peer's adopted children do not have succession rights.

Curtis is also actor Jake Gyllenhaal's godmother^[4].

Today, Curtis also takes time to support various philanthropic groups. She was Guest of Honor at the 11th annual Gala and Fundraiser in 2003 for Women in Recovery, Inc., a Venice, California-based non-profit organization offering a live-in, twelve-step program of rehabilitation for women in need. Past Honorees of this organization have included Sir Anthony Hopkins; the 2005 honoree was Angela Lansbury.