It’s been more than 40 years since Halloween originally hit theaters, but the story lives on through its sequels, cast and audience horror movie buffs.
After multiple TV roles, Jamie Lee Curtis made her big-screen debut in 1978’s Halloween as Laurie Strode, a high school babysitter who is being harassed by Michael Myers after he escapes from Warren County’s Smith’s Grove Sanitarium 15 years after killing his sister.
“[I loathe to be] scared. Loathe with a capital ‘L.’ And yet it is how I have made my entire career, which was born really from the 1978 Halloween movie,” Curtis told The Wall Street Journal in October 2021 while promoting the 12th Halloween flick. “And it’s ironic that I’m ‘that’ girl, because the truth is I’m terrified.”
She continued: “Even when I was a toddler, I was always looking over my shoulder. I’m always looking like I’m in trouble or someone’s angry at me or something is coming at me.”
During an interview with Vogue that same month, Curtis noted that “Halloween was never meant to become a franchise until it became one.”
The Freaky Friday actress explained, “Here I am, 43 years later, still playing Laurie Strode. To have that movie receive that reaction 40 years after the original was an indescribable experience. What I love about it is that we made it just like the first film. The original was made so fast for so little money by a small group of people, and [director of 2018’s Halloween] David [Gorden Green] similarly lightened the load so we could make these fast and furiously. Nobody got paid upfront, including yours truly. It’s not because we knew we’d make a lot of money on the backend— those numbers were certainly unexpected. And traditionally horror films don’t get great reviews; so given my history with this character, it felt pretty amazing.”
Several Halloween stars have popped up in the franchise since the original film, but Kyle Richards made headlines when she was called in to reprise her role as Lindsey in 2021’s Halloween Kills.
“I’m just so happy to be back on the big screen, again, doing what I love most, my first love, which is acting. I’m just grateful,” the Bravo star exclusively told Us Weekly in October 2021. “I had no idea it was going to be such a big deal and that, you know, it would have fans still passionate about it after all of these years. Just like when I signed on to do the Housewives, I thought I was doing a job for two months and I didn’t know if it was going to be a flop or a hit. And here we are [the] No. 1 show on Bravo all these years later. So, you know, you just never know.”
While it’s unclear whether Richards will be called on for more Halloween installments, there are already plans for Halloween Ends.
“In the ’78 film, you see that moment with her [Lindsey] and Tommy upstairs in the hallway after their confrontation with Michel Myers, and Laurie is pleading with them to get out of the house and go get help, and she’s their protector,” director and cowriter Green told Entertainment Weekly in October 2021. “So it was cool to be able to take that character full circle to a sequence we have on the playground where she has a very similar, protective moment with kids on a playground. It was fun to be able to see her role reversal, her maturity as a character. I’m not sure we’ve seen the last of Kyle Richards in our franchise.”
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