Jamie Lee Curtis Once Felt a Photoshoot She Did in Her Underwear Led to Her Casting in ‘Freaky Friday’

Actor Jamie Lee Curits starred alongside Lindsay Lohan in the cult hit Freaky Friday. But apart from her acting chops, the star believed a revealing photoshoot she did was what got her in the Disney film.

Why Jamie Lee Curtis once posed in a magazine wearing only a bra and underwear

Curtis once did a photoshoot for the magazine More. To do the shoot, she called the magazine personally with an idea she had in mind to inspire mature women. The Freaky Friday star posed on the cover wearing nothing but a bra and underwear on.

Rather than trying to be sexually provocative, however, Curtis did so to help women take pride in their bodies. And also to show them that they didn’t need make-up or enhancements for their confidence.

“What I’m scared of is that that’s what women have become accustomed to needing to feel good about themselves,” Curtis once said in an interview with Today (via SF Gate). “And show business and media and magazines don’t help by promoting these images of women that are completely airbrushed, that are completely altered, to then give you, the unsuspecting buyer, this fake sense of that that’s what people are supposed to look like.”

As an author of children’s books, Curtis dedicated her creativity to help young girls feel confident about themselves as well. But if she was going to preach her beliefs, she also felt she needed to practice them.

“I felt that if I’m going to try to promote something where I’m trying to explain self-esteem to children, I needed to live it,” she said. “And for me to live it means I need to be the person I look at every morning when I wake up and stand in the mirror, you know, kind of as God intended me to look.”

Jamie Lee Curtis believed she was cast in ‘Freaky Friday’ because of her magazine photoshoot

Getting the lead role for Freaky Friday was a pleasant surprise for Curtis at the time. It was a role that the actor didn’t think would come her way given the direction her life was taking.

“What’s particularly nice about it is that it was unexpected, the way things often turn out to be when they’re really wonderful in your life,” Curtis once said in an interview with Phase 9. “This was completely the last thing in the world I thought I would be doing last August, headlining a movie. I thought that was over and that I was really moving on with other things and then lo and behold this weird set of circumstances fell into place.”

Curtis asserted that not many women led roles in their 40s, which made the success of the film even more meaningful. But after meditating on it, she wondered if her photoshoot with More was what clinched her the role in the first place.

“I decided to do these photographs in this magazine in support of a book about self esteem for children which I’d written. All of which resulted in quite a bit of a… err… no, not brouhahah, that’s J-Lo and Ben… I can’t think of the word but because of [the pictures] this image of me was brought out,” she continued. “And I really do think that it was because of that the producers of the movie, when they found out with 3 days to go that their lead actress had pulled out, were like who can we get to play the mother of a teenage girl? And literally I was there. I think I was on the magazine cover in their office!”

Jamie Lee Curtis wants to be truthful to women when it comes to body positivity

Curtis recently starred in the critically acclaimed movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. In the 2022 project, the actor wanted her body to appear as real and natural as possible on the big screen. This was to further promote what she felt was a more authentic image for film audiences and fans.

“I wanted to just be truthful to this woman,” Curtis told Entertainment Weekly. “In the world, there is an industry — a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry — about hiding things. Concealers. Body-shapers. Fillers. Procedures. Clothing. Hair accessories. Hair products. Everything to conceal the reality of who we are. And my instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything.”