With nearly five decades in the entertainment industry under her belt, Jamie Lee Curtis knows the drill when it comes to navigating Hollywood beauty standards.
During an appearance on Wednesday’s episode of “IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson,” the iconic actress, 67, opened up about the “fakery” that is Hollywood, explained why she “succumbed” to the pressures of looking a certain way and revealed how she managed to discover self-love amid aging.
“S— happens, aging happens. I mean, it’s coming for all of us, by the way,” said Curtis.
“But that’s not what Hollywood is all about,” Obama responded.
“It’s not just Hollywood,” said Curtis. “It’s also the technology, it’s also social media, it’s also filtering. It’s what we used to call airbrushing is now just filtering. It’s all fakery.
“It’s just the fakery, it’s the cosmeceutical industrial complex, which is as insidious in many ways as the military industrial complex is about money. So it’s just about f—ing money, right?”
“And it’s the idea that you’re going to tell someone that ‘this is going to change you and make you better, and therefore, better means you’ll be more loved, you’ll be more successful.’ So it’s this cycle of bulls—, but it preys on our base insecurities. For many people, it’s what they look like.”
Curtis, who’s been open about her past cosmetic procedures, said that while she’s “never been pretty,” she’s learned that all the plastic surgeries, fillers and more will never address the core issue: self-esteem.
“Now, I’ve never been pretty,” she said. “And I’m saying it out loud … I wasn’t pretty like that. I wasn’t pretty the way girls are pretty. I was cute. I can look good. I can fully look good, but that was not my ticket. And that’s very important for me because that was never the thing I relied on.”
“I have succumbed, and have talked about it many times, to trying all the things,” she continued. “I’ve sucked the fat, I’ve cut the fat. I’ve tried to do the things that people do that everybody’s doing, and it doesn’t work. There are many things that happen.”
“It doesn’t work, first of all, because of the self-esteem issue,” she added. “Because you ultimately are looking in the mirror and realizing you’ve used something outside of yourself to change something to make you ‘better.’ But you’re not better because you’re still the same person as you were before.”
Curtis also spoke about the moment she realized that comparing herself to others was going against everything she was preaching.
“People were comparing themselves to me the same way I would compare myself to someone else,” said Curtis.
“I know what it feels like to look at a picture of a beautiful woman and go, ‘I’m never going to look like that.’”
Curtis decided to pose in her underwear, completely unfiltered, in a photoshoot for More magazine in 2002 while promoting her children’s book, “I’m Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem.”
“I realized I was a liar,” she said. “Because if I was paying attention to what I wrote [in my children’s book], I wouldn’t have done plastic surgery. I wouldn’t have done liposuction.”
“So I said, you know what? I’m going to take a picture of me in my undies with no good light, no makeup, no hair,” she continued.
“I’m going to stand there au natural, and you’re going to take my picture, and then you’re going to let me get all dolled up, but you’re going to have to print those two pictures side by side, and you’re going to have to say how long it took, how much money it took, how many people were involved.”
“But that was even then me understanding that what we’re selling is fraudulent,” she added.
