Jamie Lee Curtis: ‘Mortality Is Simply an Activator for Me’

The Oscar winner, 67, produces and stars in Prime Video’s adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s ‘Scarpetta’

Donna Freydkin,

AARP

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Published March 06, 2026

nicole kidman and jamie lee curtis in a scene from scarpetta

Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman), Dorothy Farinelli (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Connie Chornuk/Prime

Jamie Lee Curtis had one last thing to say.

Her handlers were signaling her to wrap up the interview. But Curtis, 67, was not finished.

“Guess what?” she said, with the easy authority of someone who has spent decades learning exactly how much space she is entitled to take up. “The boss. They can’t cut me.”

Then she cut herself. On her own terms. On her own clock: “Watch this. OK, everyone, you can now terminate the interview,” she deadpanned.

That, in miniature, is the story of Scarpetta, the Prime Video series premiering March 11 that Curtis spent five years willing into existence. She knows the exact date it started: Jan. 28, 2021. She still has the email she wrote to a producer with a simple proposition: “These books, about a brilliant and tenacious medical examiner from author Patricia Cornwell, are available. Let’s buy them.” So they did: They bought all of them.

For nearly five decades, Curtis has been one of Hollywood’s most durable presences, surviving in an industry she once described as “ageist, misogynist and pigeonholing.” But surviving was never the goal.

jamie lee curtis reacting with enthusiasm while accepting an academy award onstage

Curtis accepts the Best Supporting Actress academy award for "Everything Everywhere All at Once."

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

In recent years, Curtis has quietly repositioned herself from actor-for-hire to creative force, launching her own production company, winning an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, and landing a recurring role as the tempestuous matriarch in The Bear, which netted her an Emmy. Now, as both executive producer and costar of Scarpetta, she is doing something more specific: She identified a property nobody could crack, bought the entire library, assembled the pieces and handed the lead role to Nicole Kidman. That is not an actor waiting to be chosen. That is someone who decided the wait was over.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your animal print outfit is truly fierce. You’re on fire.

I am on fire. I’m on fire. I am on fire. Right now, I’m on fire and I’m just going to own it.

(She takes off a stiletto and holds it up to the camera) These are the shoes. So yes, you can still wear shoes like this when you’re 67 years old, even though I’m sitting down.

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You’ve been passionate about bringing Scarpetta to the screen for years. What made this the right time?

I knew that these books were great, and I’ve always been curious about why they haven’t been brought to the screen. I’m friends with Patricia (Cornwell). At one point, I said to her, “What’s up with Scarpetta?” And she goes, “Nothing.” And then it was that moment of like, oh.

I’m a producer now. I get to be a boss. And all of a sudden I thought, Well, let’s buy these books. And we bought all of them. We made this huge deal with Patricia.

You mentioned it in almost a throwaway sentence. You’re a boss now. What does that actually mean to you?

I woke up this morning — my goddaughter is Maggie Gyllenhaal, and we were texting early. Tonight is her premiere. Tonight is my premiere.

Right, she directed and produced The Bride.

I said to her, “At the end of the day, when we go to sleep tonight, we both know that the only reason these shows exist is because of us. That’s what it means to be a boss.”

That’s really what it means to get to this point in our lives. If not now, when? If not me, who? I have ideas. I don’t have to treat this like we’re doing brain surgery. Art can be fun, art can be frustrating, art can be very scary. And art can also transform and lift you.

When you have a vision for something, that’s all that’s important. You have the vision. It’s a collaborative art form and your job is to keep all of those elements working together for the common goal.

You and Nicole Kidman are both at points in your careers where you have serious leverage. How did that impact the dynamic on set?

She brings her spirit, which is open, beautiful, gracious, grateful that she gets this opportunity. I walk into every day of every job the same way. I don’t care if it’s a yogurt commercial or a TV show I’m producing. We both appreciate that we get to do this. And at this age, if we’re not in this together, I’m not sure what we’re doing.

You’ve talked a lot about freedom. In realistic terms, without hyperbole, what does that translate into for you?

Accepting my crepey skin and showing it anyway, that’s freedom. I understand what I look like. I look in the mirror. I get it. And there’s no need for me to alter it.

Everything I do has to come from emotion. And to me, emotion is freedom. I feel people. That has been a gift for me as an actor because all acting is emotion with words.

You’re producing a show about death. Did that make you face your own mortality differently?

I turned 60 and realized I was going to die sooner than later. Sooner than later means sooner than later. And that understanding meant I have no effing time to waste. No time to waste on toxic people, on relationships that don’t serve me. I’ve been self-retiring since I was 30, saying, “I'll get out of this,” because the industry I’m in is a cruel, cruel industry, particularly with aging. There’s a dismissal of people. I watched it very much with my parents [Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh]. So I have just decided to embrace that.

And yet the industry that was supposed to discard you can’t seem to get enough of you. What gives?

Every time I do one of these [press junkets], I say, “OK, guys, this will be the last time we ever do this because I don’t take it for granted that this is going to happen again.” The weird thing is it just keeps happening. But it’s not because I’m anticipating it. It’s happening organically.

Yesterday morning, I pulled up the first email I had written [producer] Jason Blum. It was Jan. 28th, 2021. I’d had a phone call with Patricia Cornwell the night before and wrote, “Hey, these books are available. Let’s buy them.” And here I am five years later talking about a TV show I’m really excited to bring out to the world.

What’s keeping that sense of urgency alive for you right now?

In my personal life, there’s been a lot of death and loss in the last three months that has rocked us all. If anything, it makes you get up the next morning with more passion, more need to do what you’re here to do, say what you need to say, love who you need to love, fight the fight you need to fight.

Mortality is simply an activator for me. I have some shit to do before I go, and I’m going to try to do it.

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Donna Freydkin has spent 10-plus years interviewing celebrities for major publications, and has written for a variety of outlets such as USA Today, Allure, Yahoo! and CNN covering topics such as films, family and favorite meals.

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