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August 3, 2003
There's a switch
Walking a mile in each other's bodiesBy LOUIS B. HOBSON
As she sits down, Curtis adjusts her bra and then her blouse. "They're either getting bigger or they're getting a mind of their own. I can't seem to find a blouse that fits properly anymore. "I had to wait this long to get busty. It happened four years ago when I turned 40," says Curtis, conceding this is rather perky conversion considering she's promoting a Disney flick. Curtis stars as psychiatrist Tess Coleman in Disney's latest remake of the body-switching comedy Freaky Friday, which opens Wednesday. The first incarnation of this story of a mother and daughter who are forced to walk in each other's bodies for a day hit screens in 1976. Barbara Harris played mother to a then 14-year-old Jodie Foster. Foster declined an offer to play the mother or even have a cameo in this Freaky Friday. Disney revisited the concept again in 1995 for a TV movie that starred Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffmann. For her Freaky Friday, Curtis is teamed with Lindsay Lohan, the star of Disney's 1998 The Parent Trap, another remake of one of its family classics. Curtis was a last-minute replacement for Annette Bening, who'd been attached to the project for almost a year. "I'm not looking for films anymore. This one fell from the sky into my lap and it was great fun. If another one comes along the same way, I'll consider it but I'm certainly not sitting by the phone waiting for offers to come in. "That part of my life is over." Curtis, who is the daughter of '50s screen icons Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, began acting in such TV series as Columbo and Operation Petticoat just a few months after graduating from high school. She made her screen debut in 1978 in Halloween, the film that defined her status as a Hollywood scream queen for three decades. Curtis has begun watching some of her old movies with the teenage friends of her 16-year-old daughter Annie. "Weirdly enough, I watched Perfect a couple of weeks ago. That is not a good movie. That is really, really, really not a good movie, but I was hot. "I can say that now that I am 44 and married and a mother. "I couldn't see or say that when I was 26. "I thought I looked fine but I didn't think I had nice breasts and I was really intimidated after that movie bombed because I was never hired to be sexy in that way again. "I thought that was Hollywood's way of telling me something. "It's really not until you hit your 40s that you feel comfortable enough in your skin to really get to know who you are. "Before that, you're always attempting to be somebody but now I realize all the pretenses didn't work." The art of pretense is at the core of Freaky Friday. Both mother and daughter are so wrapped up in their own self-images, they aren't truly aware of each other. They need to look at the world through each other's eyes. Curtis insists she had no problems playing a teenager when the body-switching happens. "The big question for everyone associated with this movie was whether I could play a convincing adult. I'm so not your typical adult." Curtis knows the first thing she'd do if she switched bodies with her own daughter. "I'd wear the shortest shorts and shortest mini-skirts I could find. I would go to the market in them. She has the most spectacular legs. "I never had great legs. "My daughter is also incredibly bright, which is this wonderful wacko combination most girls just dream of." Curtis did make her daughter just a little jealous when Annie visited her mother's trailer on the set of Freaky Friday. There on the wall was a signed copy of Justin Timberlake's latest album. "I think Justin is unbelievably hot and I'm rather vocal about it. One day this package arrived. Lindsay knows Justin's bodyguard and said she arranged for the autograph. "His album came out last September when we started filming Freaky Friday and that's all I listened to." Curtis is having a tough time getting her seven-year-old son Thomas to watch Freaky Friday. "He's frightened away by the word 'freaky.' He thinks that means scary. I'm trying to convince him, in this case, it means funny, but he's still a bit leery." Curtis has been married to comedian, writer and director Christopher Guest for 19 years. Their children are adopted. She laughs at the suggestion she might be offended at being asked to play mothers instead of girlfriends. "I am a mother in real life, so why should I be averse to playing mothers on screen? "I pride myself in being the screen mother of both Frodo Baggins and Harry Potter. "The first time I played a screen mother was in 1992 in Forever Young. Elijah Wood was my son and now he's Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings," Curtis said. In 2001, Curtis starred opposite Pierce Brosnan in the spy drama The Tailor of Panama. Her son was played by a young British child named Daniel Radcliffe. "One day I was looking at Daniel, who was standing beside the swimming pool. I turned to his mother and said: 'He could be Harry Potter.' "She vowed she'd never do that to her son because it would be such a burden for him. She obviously had a change of heart." |
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