Jamie Lee Curtis went for realistic when it came to her “Everything Everywhere All At Once” character.
The “Halloween” alum plays IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdra opposite Michelle Yeoh in the sci-fi action comedy but refused to use any prosthetics to play the “weird” character.
“Immediately after signing up, [Curtis] would text us photos of weird outfits and weird hairdos,” co-director Daniel Scheinert told Entertainment Weekly. “There was one photo of an IRS auditor that Dan Kwan had found online — I mean, maybe she worked in a DMV, I don’t know — but this one photo, Jamie was like, ‘That’s incredible, please let me be her — please, please, please, please.’ And that photo became the reference for the hairdo and the outfit.”
READ MORE: Jamie Lee Curtis Marks The ‘Bittersweet End’ For Her Role In ‘Halloween’ Films
Scheinert directs the film alongside Daniel Kwan who explained, “Everyone assumes that her belly in the movie is a prosthetic, but it’s actually her real belly. She was grateful that she was allowed to just let it out.”
Curtis, who is an activist for “natural beauty”, said she “just wanted to be truthful to this woman.”
Jamie Lee Curtis wanted to look as 'real' as possible for her #EverythingEverywhere role: "My instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything." https://t.co/OvrI3hy0FW
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) March 10, 2022
“In the world, there is an industry — a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry — about hiding things. Concealers. Body-shapers. Fillers. Procedures. Clothing. Hair accessories. Hair products. Everything to conceal the reality of who we are,” Curtis said. “And my instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything.”
She added, “I’ve been sucking my stomach in since I was 11, when you start being conscious of boys and bodies, and the jeans are super tight. I very specifically decided to relinquish and release every muscle I had that I used to clench to hide the reality. That was my goal.”
READ MORE: Jamie Lee Curtis On ‘Natural Beauty’ And Why She Tries To Avoid Looking In Mirrors
Curtis recently joined Vanessa Williams and Maria Shriver at the Radically Reframing Aging Summit to talk about how we should change the conversation around getting older.
“I do feel there has been a genocide of natural beauty. It is perpetuated by the media, it is perpetuated by magazines big time, and it is even in our life,” she said, pointing to the availability of Zoom filters to touch up how you look.
Having previously spoken about the pressures of plastic surgery, Curtis said her concern is that youth “believe they have to alter their appearance to post anything, anywhere.”
On Friday, Lili Reinhart praised Curtis for speaking out, while also sharing her own experience of being body shamed
“A director once came up to me before a take and said ‘suck in your stomach a bit,'” wrote the “Riverdale” star on her Instagram story.
“Unfortunately, it’s something I think about often when I’m filming a scene.”
She added, “Glad it’s being talked about, thank you @curtisleejamie.”
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” opens in limited theatres on March 25, and wide release on April 8.
