Jamie Lee Curtis Quotations

I have very short hair. It's the only cute haircut I think I've ever had.

I'm a tidy, neat person. But I'm not a maniac.

I've been going through photos of my mother, looking back on her life and trying to put it into context. Very few people age gracefully enough to be photographed through their aging.

I've etched out who I am through myriad haircut attempts, outfit attempts, beauty attempts, diet attempts. It's been an evolution.

I've always put my family first and that's just the way it is.

I don't think any woman wants to be known for being beautiful or busty. I think you want to be known for who you are.

I believe that life is hard. That we all are going to walk through things that are hard and challenging, and yet advertising wants us to believe that it's all easy.

I barely got out of high school, and I look back at my life often and go, 'Wow, this was awesome!'

I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older.

It's not that I'm retired; I just no longer accept acting work.

The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.

I never represented glam. That's the thing, you'll never see me in the front row of a fashion show. I'm uninterested in it. I find it trivial and banal and boring.

I'm uninterested in superheroes. I am only interested in real stories, real people, real connection.

If you just watch a teenager, you see a lot of uncertainty.

Kids are going to try drugs and alcohol; that's part of society.

Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can't do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that's all a direct result of getting sober.

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

Well, I could do it for a day, but I wouldn't want to be a teenager again. I really wouldn't.

My life is so filled with my children, my family, and the charitable work I do.

I'm age-appropriate. I dress age-appropriately, I choose mates age-appropriately. I'm a big believer in people should act their age.

I've had a little plastic surgery. I've had a little lipo. I've had a little Botox. And you know what? None of it works. None of it.

My mother and stepfather were married 43 years, so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And, you know, it's just a number.

With short hair you have to get a haircut every two or three weeks. And if you're coloring your hair, you have to color it that often. Every time I did it, I felt fraudulent.

I wasn't the kid who lined up her toys, although when it came to Barbies and that little traveling wardrobe with the drawers and the little shoes, my stuff was always on hangers and the shoes were always in pairs. Things had their places.

I think my capacity to change has given me tremendous happiness, because who I am today I am completely content to be.

The most rewarding aspect of parenting is seeing my children be authentic. The most rewarding thing for me is to see them do anything that they're proud of.

Once we get out into a kind of an open world, we really do learn about ourselves and for me it's a lesson in discovering yourself, discovering your inner resources and then literally, in the movie, finding your voice.

Getting sober was the single bravest thing I've ever done and will ever do in my life.

It was during a cosmetic procedure that I first had painkillers.

So, am I friendly with my daughter and her friends? Yes. Am I their friend? No. Does she shut the door? Yes, and I very much support the shut door.

I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that's all a direct result of getting sober.

My mother was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. There are moments when I remember her beauty, unadorned, unposed, not in some artificial place like a set or a photo call but rather captured outdoors in nature, where she took my breath away. When those moments surface, I miss her the most.

I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves.

Children are paparazzi. They take your picture with their minds when you don't want them to see you at your worst. Trust me, they SEE and HEAR everything.

I'm a disciplinarian. I'm the tough love pet owner. I believe in very well-behaved animals.

My marriage? Up to now everything's okay. But it's a real marriage - imperfect and very difficult. It's all about people evolving somewhat simultaneously through their lives. I think we've emotionally evolved.

Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older.

When I know something I like, I just want to replicate it.

And I was ashamed of myself for feeling like I had to do that in order to look a certain way. I felt misshapen, just not natural anymore. And I think it was a big stimulator of my drug use.

I think I felt that I was very well known for my figure and needed to keep that up for my work. And I regret all of it. I felt fraudulent and very shameful.

By the way, food and rent aren't the only things around here that cost money. You sleep on the couch.

Life is not supposed to be this calcified experience where you don't change.

If I'm honest I don't think the world would miss me if I never acted again.

I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.

My husband once said he'd never met anybody who walked so fast and ran so slowly. As I said, it's a little hard for me to try new things, and this was me facing a fear that I'd had my whole life. Since I had no experience running, I felt like a failure before I'd even begun.

If indeed it's a race Then the chicks do the most It isn't a brag Or an estrogen boast It's the women who've led me With big open hearts If not for their love I'd have failed at the start. And it's not just the mothers I speak of them ALL It's a woman there first When somebody falls. The multi of tasking That's easy to tease I dare a great man To try it all, PLEASE! So this is my shout out My rallying cry To women all over I hold you up high And though there are others Who'll think this poem strange It's the women who plant The root of big change.

I've been happily married to Chris for almost 20 years.

The dog actors and the relationship they have with their trainers is one of the most beautiful things I've ever watched happen in front of me.

I'm a performer. I've just been one since I was a little girl. I used to pretend all the time.

I try to go to the gym three times a week. And I have to watch what I eat. I'm a normal person.

I love performing and pretending - it's very easy for me.

Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me.

[Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was nominated for a Grammy for his spoken-word children's album] Halloween... Don't Give Up on Me.

It's not unlike the movies for human actors. Once a dog stars in a movie, they don't work very much anymore. It's kind of heartbreaking.

I've been in showbusiness all my life, but as an actress I have never been overly driven.

For years I stopped reading beauty magazines because I couldn't look at one without wanting to blow my brains out. How can those women look so good?

The media nowadays has given the message to adults. Don't try new things, don't look foolish because we will catch you and then broadcast it to the world. I think children don't have that.

My favorite time of the holidays is when the children have torn open their loot and delivered their verdicts and are looking to you for something else ... memories that have nothing to do with things bought.

Being a parent is a weird juggling act - and nobody does it right. Everybody does it wrong.

You'll never see me in the front row of a fashion show. I'm uninterested in it; I find it trivial and banal and boring.

We sit at our consoles and play "Gears of War", but we don't see images from war. We don't turn on the news and see the evidence of war, the result of war. Maybe twice a year, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, we'll go out, we'll hang our flags, we'll try to inculcate in our children some sense of national honor for the fallen. But really, we don't see it. We just don't see the pictures. There's no drive-by on the freeway of death up close. So we don't really see bravery.

People get real comfortable with their features. Nobody gets comfortable with their hair. Hair trauma. It's the universal thing.

My kids are not interested in anything I do. And I mean that not in any dis to my children or dis to me. My kids have their own life, they could give a sh*t what I do.

I used to dream of being normal. For me, if Kirk Douglas walked into the house, that was normal.

My breasts are beautiful, and I gotta tell you, they've gotten a lot of attention for what is relatively short screen time.

There is a point when you aren't as much mom and daughter as you are adults and friends.

You can't live a truthful life without regret.

I too was a little embarrassed by my recent topless 'scandal' and the subsequent parodies.

Because I know I'm an addict, and I know I'm an alcoholic.

All the work built my fame and certainly made me more money, but the toll it took in my home was not good.

I want to be older. I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel way better now than I did when I was 20. I'm stronger, I'm smarter in every way, I'm so much less crazy than I was then.

Pilates is the only exercise program that has changed my body and made me feel great

I don't ever want to make taking pictures into another way of saying 'Here I am'. Because I'm as here as I want to be.

Actually, the books were never a planned career path.

Don't judge a book by its cover 'til you've read the book.

I tried to find a rhythm, and I stopped comparing myself to anybody else. One of the great phrases for me is "Compare and despair." If I compare myself to Kate Middleton or Dame Judi Dench, I'm going to come out at the bottom and be sad.

I can play rhythm guitar. I know how to hold a guitar and strum it.

I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change.

Now all of a sudden I'm so less interested in pretending to be a lot of other people, and much more interested in being me.

It's very hard, when you're a famous person, to "de-famous" your home, but tokens of my fame just felt like a burden for my children. And for me.

The same way that mid century modern architecture was in the 50s, I want to be as a human being. New. Different. Challenging the old. Function over frivolity. Clean living. Clean lines.

Without my women friends, I wouldn't know anything. They've been my teachers and my mothers. My mother was a wonderful person, but she didn't give me a lot of the stuff I needed to advance myself as an adult woman. I have a really strong group of girlfriends, and we share a lot with one another - the complications of raising children, marriages, personal and physical struggles.

I'm not sure what fame is for if it isn't to focus on charitable work.quot;

We are all born worthy. Worthy of love, worthy of success.

~As a mom, you have to look at how much time you're spending with your kids. There is nothing you will regret more in your life - nothing - than not being present for your children.~

My husband and I are very different. Our company is called Syzygy Industries, which can mean a pair of opposites. And that's exactly what we are. Yet there is obviously a very strong pull toward each other.

I don't have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've got back fat. People assume that I'm walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It's insidious - Glam Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don't want the unsuspecting 40-year-old women of the world to think that I've got it going on. It's such a fraud. And I'm the one perpetuating it.

I have to be careful to get out before I become the grotesque caricature of a hatchet-faced woman with big knockers.

I'm not a prophet. I'm not a teacher. I have no degrees. My degree is from the University of Life.

I'm one of those people who does a lot of things. I'm lucky. I get up and I have a lot of energy. I have a great work ethic.

We look at adoption as a very sacred exchange. It is not done lightly on either side. I would dedicate my life for this child.

I work with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I sit proudly as one of only two recovering addicts on their board.

I have a rule: Pretend you're going on a trip for two weeks, and pull what you'd wear on that two-week trip, and get rid of everything else.

Pick clothes that you really love. And wear them. And don't make anything "special." If it's being held for something "special," wear it to the market. Wear it every day!

My mom said I was a handful. Now I'm helpful.

Exchange the words 'have to' with 'get to.' Exchange the word 'can't' with 'unwilling.

The system is only as good as the person programming it. If you don't have the follow-through, your system is useless. And by the way, it's that way in parenting; it's that way in marriages.

To make new friends you have be willing to put in the time.

Nowadays, when you make movies, you don't need any lights at all. You have to remember, back in the day, the film stocks that they had were very, very insensitive and they would have these humongous lights and lighting was everything, so everyone looked good. Nowadays with digital film where you don't need any light at all, you could shoot in the [bleep] dark. It makes people not look so good and it makes aging on film much, much harder.

Recovery is an acceptance that your life is in shambles and you have to change it.