The single greatest accomplishment of my human life
was arresting my addiction to opiates and alcohol.
Jamie Lee Curtis is many things.
An actress, an author, an addiction survivor
and an actual Baroness.
But before all that, she was the girl who survived.
Back in 1978 the movie 'Halloween' gave birth to the slasher movie genre.
And it also turned Jamie Lee Curtis into a star.
And now all these years later she is back
not just to survive, but to have her final revenge.
So I can kill him.
Do it again?
Yeah, you have a very bad clap.
Do you want a really good clap?
Yeah? Do you want to give me a good clap?
Oh! There it is.
That's a good skill. Everybody needs a friend that's a good clap starter.
I'm a clap starter.
I should probably say hi to you.
Hello.
- I'm Marc, nice to meet you. - I'm Jamie. Hi Marc.
So, one of the striking things about this film is that
a couple of minutes in you actually realise it's a film about trauma.
All this hiding, all this preparation
it was for nothing.
It took priority over your family.
It cost you your family.
This trauma that has sustained for a really long time.
And I was curious, what about that idea...
What was it about that concept that appealed to you?
You know, we make horror movies.
Well I don't.
You do.
But I don't like them.
But we make these movies, but we never talk about what happens to anybody.
You know, we inflict this sort of intense experience, on unsuspecting often young people.
But then we never revisit it.
And never know really what happened.
And throughout the world traumas happen.
And we very rarely go back and ask "How're you doing?"
And I loved that this was a movie that went back 40 years later
to explore and to expose the realities of trauma on a human being
who is not given any mental health services, help, support etc.
That's the idea.
So today we will be reading one of our favourite books.
Welcome to story time with Erin.
We are going to read...
'Tell Me Again About The Night I Was Born'
By Jamie Lee Curtis, illustrated by Laura Cornell.
You wrote a beautiful book called 'Tell Me About The Night I Was Born'
Yes.
And it's an exploration of adopting children, you've adopted children yourself
and I've heard you describe it as a sacred gift.
It is.
What did you mean by that, for somebody's who's never experienced that what does that term mean?
So,
families are built through all sorts of ways
but the act of placing, of carrying and birthing a child
and placing that child in the receiving hands of a mother
who is in that moment declaring that she will throw down
her own life and sacrifice every single thing that she has for the care and raising and feeding of that child,
that exchange is a sacred exchange
but the gift may not be a sacred gift for the child
because that is theirs to work out, whether or not
they are happy about it or sad about it or angry about it.
A lot of people misunderstand adoption and they used pejorative words and phrases to go a long with it.
So they'll say things like:
"Did you buy your baby?"
They'll say in front of your child "That's not your real mum, right?"
And so I wrote a book out of my experience of trying to...
re-align people's idea of what it means to have an adoptive family.
I actually wrote it primarily
for that nasty mum in my daughter's kindergarten class.
Was this a real person or imaginary person?
Let me just say there's a little bit of a composite, if I will.
But, you know, she said something like
"Oh, no, no, she's not her real mum."
or something horrible and I remember going like "Ooooo-kay."
Here's a book for Christmas.
"Yeah I'm gonna go home and write a book and I'm gonna shove it up your..."
It was cathartic then for you?
Well everything I have ever done is cathartic.
Really everything?
I've written 14 books for children, every one has come out of me in a weird birthing process of their own.
I refer to it as the closest to rap that I will ever do.
I interviewed once, LL Cool J was in the movie 'Halloween H2O' and I said something about
"So this whole freestyling thing, is that like real?"
"Like are you telling me, you could freestyle about anything right here, right now?"
and he said "Yeah."
and I said
"Okay freestyle about the mash potatoes."
And he did and that flow, is no different than the books that I've written for children.
They come out of me in a flow and they come out all in tact,
almost entirely the book that is published is what pops into my head.
I'm curious, of all the different projects you've done
so let's take books, tv shows, movies.
- There's been milestones. - You have...
You're omitting commercials.
- Okay, well let's include commercials as well. - Okay, please. Thank you.
The reason I'm setting it up that way is because I want to know
of the different projects you've done
Which one changed you the most?
It wasn't work.
It wasn't work?
So what was it then?
I got sober.
How hard was that?
That was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
And it is a most human thing to say
"I am in trouble, I need help."
We over-analyse it, we over-verbalise it
and I think it scares people off because it seems daunting.
And I can tell you from my own experience that
the single greatest accomplishment of my human life
was arresting my addiction to opiates and alcohol.
And...
And I talk to people all day long about addiction
because it is not a...
If it's a secret it will kill you.
If it's not a secret you may be able to save your own life.
So what would you tell yourself about that process
that you wish you had known before you embarked on the process of sobriety?
You know what? The truth of the matter is
Nobody is ready until they're ready.
Nobody can hear things until they're ready to hear them.
And so there would of been nothing I could of said to me, that would of helped me in that moment.
I had to come to that understanding myself
and seek help, the way I did.
We all would like to go back to our younger selves. How old are you?
Thirty-three.
Alright you're 33 I'm gonna be 60 in November.
On Thanksgiving.
We all would like to back to our 15-year-old-self and we'd all say "lighten up!"
"It's gonna be okay!"
"You're beautiful, you're gonna have a happy life..."
We all would like to go back to our 15-year-old-selves and give ourselves a hug
and a real cuddle and say "It's gonna be okay."
Everybody walked through glass, broken glass and fire in their adolescence, everybody.
Nobody, nobody, nobody got through that unscathed.
It's the process of human evolution, it's a difficult time
and so the message I would give you, me and anybody who's watching this,
anywhere in the world, is you're gonna be okay.
- Jamie Lee Curtis - Thank you.
Lovely to talk to you, I could talk to you all day long.