Jamie Lee Curtis, one of the most iconic “scream queens,” starred as Laurie Strode for the final time in 2022’s Halloween Ends. Curtis first appeared as the character in 1978 in her feature film debut in John Carpenter’s Halloween. The film was a major success and was the highest-grossing independent film of its time, earning accolades as a classic horror film. Since then, she has reprised the role in sequels Halloween II (1981), Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), Halloween: Resurrection (2002), Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills (2021).

While Halloween Ends marks the final outing for Laurie, series creator Carpenter recently said that he doesn’t believe it’s the end of the franchise itself. Curtis admitted in an interview with NME that she has never watched any of the Halloween movies. “I’m not [a] fan of the movies,” Curtis proclaimed. “I’ve never seen any of them. None of them! It’s not my job. It’s your job! It’s your job to figure it all out.”

Curtis began her reign as a scream queen following 1978’s Halloween and landed other horror roles in films like 1980’s The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train and 1981’s Roadgames. Curtis’ film work expanded from horror and starred in a number of comedies like Trading Places (1983), A Fish Called Wanda (1988), Freaky Friday (2003), Christmas with the Kranks (2004), Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008), and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

There is a Jamie Lee Curtis movie out there for everyone, but our list excludes her Halloween franchise roles. See our top 10 picks below:

• 10. From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)

  This Studio Ghibli animated film is set in 1963 Japan, which is in the midst of swift modernisation, leaving behind the Second World War’s painful memories and focusing on a brighter future, symbolized by 1964’s Tokyo Olympics. A group of Yokohama students fight to save their school’s clubhouse from the wrecking ball during preparations for the Olympic Games. While working there, Umi Matsuzaki and Shun Kazama gradually attract each other, but face a sudden trial. Curtis voices Ryoko Matsuzaki (Umi’s mother) in the English version, a medical professor studying in the United States. Gillian Anderson, Aubrey Plaza, Christina Hendricks and Ron Howard are also voice actors in this drama.

• 9. Roadgames (1981)

  In this Richard Franklin horror flick, a laid-back American truck driver (Stacey Keach) in south Australia starts to suspect a man driving a green van of killing young women. Along his route, he picks up Hitch (Curtis), and they proceed to play a cat-and-mouse game in order to catch him red-handed.

• 8. Blue Steel (1990)

  In this Kathryn Bigelow crime thriller, Curtis plays an inexperienced New York cop named Megan Turner who kills a convenience store robber. She doesn’t notice commodities trader Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver) takes the dead man’s gun and she starts dating him. With no weapon at the crime scene, the police hold Turner accountable for killing an unarmed man. Meanwhile, Hunt uses the stolen weapon to go on a killing spree. Turner teams up with detective Nick Mann (Clancy Brown) to clear her name and catch the killer.

• 7. The Fog (1980)

  In another John Carpenter-directed horror, a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary, but strange things begin to happen. Curtis — once again! — plays a hitchhiker. Her character, Elizabeth, discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village and more people start to die.

• 6. Knives Out (2019)

  The actress had no great expectations for the comedy-mystery-thriller despite the presence of Rian Johnson in the director’s chair and an all-star cast, from Daniel Craig and Chris Evans to Christopher Plummer as a rich novelist and father of Curtis’ character, Linda Drysdale. But the result was an Oscar-nominated critical sensation and box office hit.

  “I was actually quite isolated,” Curtis says of the shoot in Massachusetts. “I was living in this weird hotel by myself, and a lot of the movie, I’m not in. I was alone for a lot and it was a very tough time. It turned out to be this fantastic movie. I would never have known that the movie we were making was the movie that we made. It wasn’t evident to me, because Ryan was so specific in his methodology, and it’s not like we’re all watching monitors and seeing all the work. We had no idea. We’d just do our little thing and then go home. It was just such a delightful surprise.”

  Curtis became one of the film’s biggest boosters, helping Knives Out to achieve a global gross of more than $300 million.

  “I remember when they wanted me to go to CinemaCon with Knives Out, I was like, they want me to go to CinemaCon?” she says. “They don’t want all those other people to go to CinemaCon? Because I really felt like I was this tiny, tiny, delicious but tiny little part of the puzzle. It just was so fun to actually become its head cheerleader. I’m a bit of a weapon of mass promotion and I got behind that one in a big way, because it was so fun and great and people loved it.”

• 5. True Lies (1994)

  In this James Cameron action-comedy, Curtis stars as Helen Tasker, Harry Tasker’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wife. Harry is secretly a spy but pretends to be a dull salesman. Harry’s mission in tracking down nuclear missiles in the possession of Islamic jihadist Aziz (Art Malik) becomes complicated when he realizes his neglected wife is contemplating an affair with Simon (Bill Paxton), a used-car salesman who claims he’s a spy.

• 4. A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

  Curtis stars as con artist Wanda Gershwitz in the John Cleese comedy, starring alongside Cleese as Archie Leach, Michael Palin as Ken Pile and Kevin Kline as Otto. When a massive diamond heist goes badly, Wanda attempts to seduce George’s lawyer Archie Leach to find out where George hid the diamonds. Meanwhile, Ken repeatedly attempts to kill an elderly woman (Patricia Hayes) who witnessed the robbery.

• 3. Trading Places (1983)

  Snobbish investor Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and wily street con artist Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) find their positions reversed as part of a bet by callous millionaires Mortimer (Don Ameche) and Randolph Duke (Ralph Bellamy) in this classic comedy. An employee of the Dukes, Winthorpe is framed by the brothers for a crime he didn’t commit, with the siblings then installing the street-smart Valentine in his position. When Winthorpe and Valentine uncover the scheme, they set out to turn the tables on the Dukes. Curtis stars as Ophelia, a savvy and sweet sex worker who decides to become a much-needed ally to Winthorpe.

• 2. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

  It’s one of the best films of 2022! Curtis stars as stern IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre in this action-adventure sci-fi comedy. With her laundromat on the brink of failure and her marriage to wimpy husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) on the rocks, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) struggles to cope with everything. Her relationships with her judgmental father Gong Gong (James Hong) and her gay daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) are tattered and through an inexplicable multiverse rift while at the IRS office, Evelyn jumps down the rabbit hole. Curtis’ Deirdre is Evelyn’s enemy in one universe, but her hot-dog-fingered lover in another.

  “That film had so little expectation,” Curtis told Entertainment Weekly in an interview. “It was made for so little, so fast, in Simi Valley, California. 95 percent of the dialog I have in that movie was shot in the first two days and then the rest of the movie, I just marauded around. [Laughs] The day the Covid lockdown started was the day we finished shooting, like the Friday before, and for two years the Daniels have been creating, with Paul (Rogers) their editor, this movie. I saw that movie for the first time at South by Southwest and my mind was literally blown open. I was in shock because it’s spectacular.”

• 1. Freaky Friday (2003)

  Curtis and Lindsay Lohan play single mom Tess and rebellious teenage daughter Anna Coleman who swap bodies in Disney’s third and best adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ 1972 novel. After receiving cryptic fortunes at a Chinese restaurant, the two wake up the next day to discover that they have somehow switched bodies. Unable to switch back, they are forced to live each other’s lives until a solution can be found. In the process, they develop a new sense of respect and understanding for one another.

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