Jamie Lee Curtis' Best Movie And TV Roles To Date

Jamie Lee Curtis got her start as one of horror's earliest scream queens. From there, she has seemingly made a career out of proving the naysayers and doubters wrong, branching out of the horror genre and into comedy, drama, and action movies. Even after making her name as a true Hollywood starlet out of the shadow of her superstar parents, she refused to be pigeonholed. She took surprising career turns, such as when she went from starring in hit movies to the small screen sitcom "Anything But Love," where she received her first Golden Globe. And just when critics thought they had her figure out in the 1990s, she embraced her slasher film roots rather than run from them, and returned to the franchise that made her famous by starring in "Halloween: H20."

Even if modern audiences might know her best as the commercial spokesperson for Activia yogurt, Jamie Lee Curtis boasts a versatile, varied, and full career in front of the camera. From leading lady to part-time TV guest star, Jamie Lee Curtis is a true maverick who never lets Hollywood dictate her path. It's time to count down Jamie Lee Curtis' best roles in movies and on television — including a few that you may have forgotten.

In the mid 90s, Jamie Lee Curtis starred twice in the role of Shelly DeVoto in the films "My Girl" and "My Girl 2." The coming-of-age films starred Anna Klumsky as Vada Sultenfuss, with the first of the two movies being her screen debut. The first film also starred Macauley Culkin and is notable for featuring a rare emotional gut-punch through the death of a child character, a moment that would traumatize a generation.

Curtis co-starred as Shelly DeVoto, a woman who befriends the young Vada and works at the funeral parlor run by Vada's father Harry. Before long, Harry and Shelly are dating, which makes Shelly's friendship with Vada difficult. However, the two grow closer when Shelly acts as a quasi-mother figure, and in the end she is the one to help Vada deal with the sudden death of her best friend. "My Girl" is one of Curtis' most serious and emotionally dramatic efforts, and in 1993 her part in the movie continued to fill out a career built on playing a damsel in distress in over-the-top horror movies. "My Girl" and its sequel, by contrast, further showed off Curtis' range and earned her good reviews for her ability to instill the role with both comedy and pathos.

In 1997 the entire main cast of the critically acclaimed 1988 hit "A Fish Called Wanda" reassembled for another British comedy farce. The movie, "Fierce Creatures," reunited Jamie Lee Curtis with her former costars Kevin Kline and ex-Monty Python stars John Cleese and Michael Palin. Once again written by John Cleese, the ensemble comedy is often described as the spiritual successor to the earlier film, with the foursome from "A Fish Called Wanda" all playing entirely different characters.

Where in "A Fish Called Wanda" Jamie Lee Curtis plays the title character, a sly con artist, here she plays business executive Willa Weston, who must help run a British zoo recently acquired by Australian magnate Rod McCain (Kevin Kline) and under the inept ministrations of Rollo Lee (John Cleese). In order to ensure healthy profits in his new venture, Lee institutes a "fierce creatures" policy that means that the zoo will only put deadly animals on display.

Despite not being as well-loved as the earlier film, "Fierce Creatures" was a solid comedy with a great cast. Noted critic Roger Ebert called out Curtis in particular, saying "I like the way Jamie Lee Curtis demonstrates how a low-cut dress can shift the balance of power in almost any room."

"Scream Queens" was the horror comedy satire that poked fun at the horror movie genre, so who better to cast as the dean of a fictional university terrorized by a serial killer than the original scream queen herself, Jamie Lee Curtis? No brainer or not, the casting worked well, and Curtis hammed it up as the ruthless dean tasked with keeping the college kids in line.

Set at the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority, students on campus have to deal with a decades-old mystery that suddenly gets renewed attention, as a murderer in a red devil costume begins picking off girls one by one. It's a classic horror movie premise of a killer on campus, with Vox comparing elements of the show to the likes of "Glee" and "American Horror Story," saying it was "as close to a mashup of those two series as anyone could possibly get." Once again, Curtis drew praise for another iconic performance, with Vox describing the actress as "visibly thrilled to be playing the dean, a ferocious character, especially when she gets to stomp all over collegiate plaything Chad Radwell." A highly recommended watch if you like Curtis and appreciate her body of work in horror as she pokes a little fun at the genre's tropes. 

In 2020 the show's creator Ryan Murphy revealed that he was working on a revival of the comedy/horror series. Is it possible we haven't seen the last of Jamie Lee Curtis as Cathy Munsch?

Fresh off her five-episode stint as Dr. Samantha Ryan on the procedural police drama "NCIS," Jamie Lee Curtis immediately switched gears, appearing in the Fox comedy "New Girl", as star Zooey Deschanel's hilarious on-screen mother Joan Day. Playing opposite comedy legend Rob Reiner as her television ex-husband, her six appearances on "New Girl" are some of the best recurring guest spots on the seven season series that has included multi-episode parts for the likes of Josh Gad, Megan Fox, and Linda Cardellini. 

In her debut episode on the series, title "Parents", Deschanel's Jess plays a game of "Parent Trap" with her divorced mom and dad, attempting to reignite the romantic spark between them in the hopes of getting them back together. It's a tired, almost overused sitcom story, but it works because the duo of Jamie Lee Curtis and Rob Reiner do have genuinely great chemistry together on screen. IGN reviewed the episode upon its airing and heaped it with praise in no small part due to Curtis, giving the episode four out of five stars. "You really couldn't have made better casting choices for Jess's parents. Jamie Lee Curtis and Rob Reiner both knocked it out of the park," said the site.

Curtis has appeared in a number of comedies over her long career, and her side-splitting role as Joan Day in "New Girl" is right up there with the best of them.

Curtis may have skipped the 2008 remake of "Halloween" but not because she has anything against remakes. After all, she took the starring role of Tess Coleman in the second of three remakes of Disney's "Freaky Friday" just five years earlier in 2008. In this version, Jamie Lee Curtis, who came to fame playing high school teenagers, now plays the mom — or rather, the mom inhabited by the soul of her teenage daughter after some magical hijinx.

In the film, the mother and daughter don't get along and come to understand each other through the body swap. Curtis slipped into the role of a troubled child who must deal with her mother's relationship with a new boyfriend, while her mother is trapped in her teenaged self and must cope with being back in high school. Curtis is the key to the film, giving a believable performance as the teenager trapped in an adult body, partly thanks to the help of costar Lindsay Lohan, who gave her lessons on how to behave like a modern teenager. 

Curtis helped make "Freaky Friday" become the rare early 2000's comedy that's only gotten better with age, with Buzzfeed saying "it's Jamie Lee who makes this film." Somewhat ironically, another remake of sorts came to theaters in 2020, this time with a slasher movie twist on the original concept. Sadly, Curtis was not involved.

Curtis' "Trading Places" was a standard 80's comedy, and her follow up performance in a comedy would be 1988's "A Fish Called Wanda", a wild British farce. Written by the legendary John Cleese, the film is famous for reuniting Cleese with his fellow Monty Python alum Michael Palin, as their first high profile project in Hollywood together. But it's Jamie Lee Curtis as the title character Wanda that is the star here, in a dark comedy and heist movie focused on a group of con artists out to swindle each other.

Her performance as Wanda is one for the comedy record books. In just her second comedic performance she delivers a star turn, not only getting in a number of jabs and jokes, but invoking the spirit of cinemas greatest femme fatales, with her uncompromising mastery of the game to stay one step ahead of the men around her. Curtis' ability to use her considerable comedic talents, honed on "Trading Places," allowed her to become more than a sidekick and the scene-stealer, but a genuine laugh leader.

Few actors have films that so define their career and fame as Jamie Lee Curtis and "Halloween." Despite starring in other famous films, despite branching out into other genres and winning awards for other roles, she will always be Laurie Strode, thanks to her nail-biting performance and landmark role as the "final girl" in the groundbreaking horror film.

Though she had a brief voice cameo in the third film, she declined an offer to appear in the fourth and skipped the four sequels. So beloved was Curtis in the role that they kept asking her to return, with her finally agreeing to play Strode again in "Halloween H20" in 1998, and subsequent appearances in "Halloween Resurrection," "Halloween" (2018), "Halloween Kills", and the upcoming "Halloween Ends," meaning she will have appeared in eight of the thirteen "Halloween" franchise films. Universally praised for her performance as the prey of an unstoppable killer, she matured into the role over the course of the series alongside her character into an older, wiser, stronger protagonist.

Despite the ominous title of the forthcoming third film in the most recent trilogy, "Halloween Ends," we may not have seen the last of Curtis as Laurie Strode. She recently spoke to USA Today about her potential future in the role. "If I've learned one thing in 43 years, it's you just never say goodbye," she said. "I'll say goodbye when I'm dead."