Jamie Lee Curtis, 64, started acting over four decades ago garnering countless memorable roles in both film and television. However, the A-list actress revealed she was quite shy to start with and what seemed like an insult from a co-star turned into motivation for one of her iconic performances.
Speaking about her 1994 hit film True Lies, where Jamie starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actress revealed it was a former co-star who gave her the confidence to conquer the tango.
The late John Ritter, who starred in Anything But Love with Jamie, was a producer on one of the actress’s TV shows “back in the day”.
The actress told the Variety Awards Circuit podcast about one particular run-in with her producer on the show as they were auditioning other actors.
Jamie noted that the audition scene saw the new actor “pressing himself” towards her, while her character tried “to keep him away”.
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After doing the scene with one acting hopeful, she recalled: “John Ritter walked up to me after the actor left the room and whispered to me: ‘You have really funny legs’.”
While it’s easy to see this comment as an outright insult, for Jamie it was seemingly more like permission to act as she needed.
She explained: “I can tell you right now that the performance in True Lies is because John Ritter told me: ‘It’s okay, you have funny legs, go for it’.”
In 1994’s True Lies, Jamie danced a sensual tango with Hollywood hunk Arnold Schwarzenegger.
For the scene the actress donned a chic black dress with a thigh-high slit, showing off her “funny legs”.
However, the star had another dancing moment in the film as she performed a purposely-awkward striptease for Arnold’s character.
In 2021, the actress also addressed the iconic striptease scene on the People in the ‘90s podcast, where she disclosed that she actually had free reign for the most part.
The scene had no choreographer, nor any rehearsals, so Jamie was for the most part simply freestyling it.
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Director James Cameron also let her choose the song she wanted to dance to, with Jamie ultimately deciding on Alone in the Dark by John Hiatt due to its “really funky rhythm”.
Her first few renditions of the dance were actually deemed “too sexy”, by James which led to the hilarious fall her character takes halfway through.
She recalled the director asking her between takes: “If I get a pad, will you let go of the pole?”
Jamie obliged, and the crew “wheeled in a little thin mat” for her to fall on. While she had done her original dance a few times by now, the new routine with her fall only took two takes to nail.