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Jamie Lee Curtis was attending the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, when she decided that she \u2014 like her parents before her \u2014 wanted to pursue a career in acting. Curtis made her professional screen debut the following year (in 1977), playing an unnamed background character in an episode of “Quincy, M.E.” She was 19. This quickly led to other notable TV roles in shows like “The Hardy Boys\/Nancy Drew Mysteries” and “Columbo,” as well s a lead role in the short-lived sitcom “Operation Petticoat.”<\/p>\n
During her flurry of TV jobs, Curtis landed her first role in a feature film, playing the intellectual teen Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” The 1978 horror film was a quick, cheap exploitation movie (it only had a budget of about $325,000), but it was a big career move for Curtis. Indeed, she couldn’t have predicted that “Halloween” would become an enormous success, making over $70 million at the box office and spawning multiple sequels and reboots. Curtis has appeared in seven of the 13 “Halloween” movies<\/a>\u00a0made to date, so “Halloween” was a career-starter for her in more ways than one.<\/p>\n Of course, back in 1978, Curtis was still nervous. She didn’t have any star power yet and needed to prove herself as an actor. In fact, she’d been working just long enough to know that an actor can be fired from on their first day of shooting. They may have passed an audition, but a director can suddenly change their mind on set after working with a performer for a day.<\/p>\n