Jamie Lee Curtis has been the center of attention at tonight’s SAG Awards, causing quite the commotion after boasting herself as a “nepo baby” multiple times. While accepting her Best Supporting Actress award for Everything Everywhere All At Once, the star brought the audience to laughing fits and tears with a stunning speech—proving that, yes, Jamie Lee is all of us.
The splashy Hollywood event began with a montage of actors sharing their stories leading to their fame (and, in turn, their SAG membership), including Curtis.
“I got my SAG card when I was 19 years old when I signed a seven-year contract to Universal Studios and starred in an ABC TV series called Operation Petticoat,” Curtis said, adding, “which my father, Tony Curtis—nepo baby!—starred in. I was fired from that TV show a year later and I thought my life was over.”
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As we all know, Curtis’ acting career was far from over, as she went on to star in John Carpenter’s horror classic Halloween, and more recently, awards darling Everything Everywhere All At Once. Curtis nabbed the win at the awards show Sunday evening for playing cranky IRS agent Deirdre in the A24 action comedy, while also nominated against co-star Stephanie Hsu.
After screaming “shut up!” and kissing the film’s star Michelle Yeoh on the mouth, Curtis took the stage to loud cheers from the room of her peers. But she wasn’t having any of it: “Come on!” she shouted, winning more love from the crowd. “Well, I didn’t mean ‘come on’ more, I meant ‘come on’ like stop,” she joked.
“I’m wearing the wedding ring my father gave my mother,” Curtis continued. “They hated each other, by the way. But my sister Kelly and I were born from love. My father was from Hungary and my mother was from Denmark. They had nothing, and they became these monstrous stars in this industry they loved so much. My parents were actors.”
Jamie Lee, the daughter of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, has been open about her disdain for the recent nepotism discourse in the past few months. In a post made to Instagram, Curtis said New York magazine’s polarizing nepo baby article was “designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt.”
Now, however, the actress has a bit of a sense of humor about the whole affair—though she’s still fighting back.
“I know you look at me and think, well, ‘Nepo baby. That’s why she’s there.’ And I totally get it,” Curtis said as she accepted her first SAG Award. “But the truth of the matter is, I’m 64 years old and this is just amazing.”
While some thought that Curtis would split the vote with Hsu, leading to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever actress Angela Bassett’s sweep of awards season leading up to the Oscars in two weeks, this win has the Academy Awards leaning towards Everything Everywhere All at Once. The Best Supporting Actress race is tighter than ever—can Angela Bassett do the thing?
