STACK #219 January 2023

FEATURE MOVIE

DON'T MISS

stopping the emotion. I'm letting it come. Like I'm trying to just be open to it all,” she says. A courageous women’s activist, naturally Curtis seizes the opportunity to discuss the state of Laurie’s mental health, and how her struggling survivor never got the help she needed following her first encounter with Michael 44 years ago. ”I know enough about the benefits of therapeutic help, crisis counselling, and grief therapy that I didn't need to investigate that. I was just happy to know that the Laurie we are meeting four years later has had a little of that – something that Laurie never got in 1978. “Maybe two days later, she went back to school? Nobody talked about it. It was just that thing where there was no grief counselling. They just put a Band-Aid on her arm and her parents were like, ‘It’s OK. You survived. You go back to school’,” she adds. “And so that's why, when we meet her in 2018, she's such a mess. She's living behind barricades. She's an alcoholic. She's so convinced of his return. And so to do a movie now, four years after that graphic ending of Halloween Kills , I know what Laurie got. She got a little help. Good. Is she healed? No. Does any parent heal from the death of a child? No. There is no healing. It's not possible. But you can move forward, and that's the Laurie we meet.” Undoubtedly, Curtis herself is moving forward at lightning speed, embracing all that Hollywood has to offer.

Jamie Lee Curtis chats with STACK about her final showdown with Michael Myers in the new trilogy’s closing chapter, Halloween Ends . Words Gill Pringle LAURIE’S LAST STAND

J amie Lee Curtis’s entire franchise, the actress giving credit to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic for launching her career, while David Gordon Green’s three-part reboot ultimately revitalised it in 2018, at a time when roles had begun to run dry. After a career spanning career has been inextricably tied up in the Halloween more than four decades – with memorable roles in Trading Places , A Fish Called Wanda , True Lies , and many other box office hits – Curtis was barely working when Green called five years ago asking if she would consider returning to the franchise. And what a comeback! The 2018 reboot became the highest-grossing film of the

Borderlands , and Winona Ryder and Jared Leto in spooky comedy Haunted Mansion . When STACK spoke with Curtis ahead of Halloween Ends ’ release, she was naturally emotional about the end of such an important and long chapter in her life. One of the most enduring actor character pairings in cinema history, she acknowledges the significance of her

Is this really the end?

Jamie Lee Curtis may be done with playing Laurie Strode, but over the course of the 44-year franchise, Michael Myers has proven time and time again that he has more lives than a litter of kittens. While Halloween Ends definitively concludes his current reign of terror, as far as the franchise and future reboots are concerned, never say never. Indeed, in an interview with Cinemablend , director David Gordon Green speculated: “Something’s gonna happen because Michael is too cool. They’re not gonna let him rest too long.”

• Halloween Ends is out on Jan 25

farewell to horror’s first 'final girl’, Laurie Strode – a woman she has played for more than four decades. “So now I am Laurie Strode and it's like this interesting collision between Jamie and Laurie. And yet, I'm saying goodbye to Laurie Strode. And everywhere I go people love her. So it’s a big, big wash of love and energy for Laurie Strode, and I'm just receiving it, feeling it, and I cry every day. “There's emotion and I'm not

series, kickstarting an all new Halloween trilogy. Halloween Ends marks Curtis’s final performance as babysitter-turned-survivor Laurie Strode, in a final showdown with her longtime nemesis Michael Myers. If Michael could never quite be extinguished, then the roles are now reversed with Curtis forging ahead with her own unstoppable post- Halloween revival, with upcoming roles opposite Cate Blanchett in action-comedy

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