Jamie Lee Curtis’ Most Iconic ‘Freaky Friday’ Line Was the Only Time She Improvised

Actor Jamie Lee Curtis added another iconic film to her filmography when she and Lindsay Lohan teamed up for Freaky Friday. The movie saw Curtis go off script, something she’d never done once in her entire career. And yet, her one unscripted moment turned out to be perhaps the most memorable in the film.

Jamie Lee Curtis’ only improvised line in ‘Freaky Friday’ was a mantra she lived by

Even after so many years, Curtis considered 2003’s Freaky Friday close to her heart. The famous Disney movie saw Curtis and Lohan swap bodies to experience each other’s lives. Ironically, the original lead actor for Freaky Friday was also swapped with Curtis at the last minute.

“I was in the middle of a book tour when my agent called. An actress had been involved in the movie and chose not to do it; I was a replacement part. That was Thursday. I read the script on Friday, flew home on Saturday, had my hair dyed red Sunday, and was working Monday — with a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old at home, playing a 15-year-old,” Curtis once told The New York Times.

Fortunately for Curtis, she felt the urgency and immediacy of the life-changing role ended up benefitting her performance.

“Had I had all the time in the world to prepare, I don’t think it would’ve been so good. I just had to be in my body. I was also newly sober and I was able to have a community within the movie-work world. That was a big deal for me,” she said.

Curtis also crossed a couple of milestones doing the project. It was the first time critics felt she gave an Oscar-worthy performance, which was a huge career turning point.

“For a girl who was in horror movies and body comedies, it was shocking. Now, all these years later, the skinny gold person lives in my house,” she said.

But it was also the first time Curtis had ever gone off script. Despite being new at improvisation, she accidentally ended up creating Freaky Friday’s most quoted phrase.

“Well, ‘Make good choices’ is the only line I’ve ever improvised in my life, and it became a banner for Freaky Friday,” she told Deadline.

Will Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan have another iconic scream scene for ‘Freakier Friday’

The original Freaky Friday also showed why Curtis initially made a career out of being one of the horror genre’s original scream queens. After Curtis and Lohan swap bodies in the film, there’s an iconic scene where Curtis screams in terror realizing that she’s old. The pair recently reunited to film the long-awaited sequel Freakier Friday. So it makes sense that some have wondered if the co-stars will duplicate their screams from the first. Curtis teased in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes that they did do a rendition of that scene. However, it remains to be seen if it will be included in the film.

“I don’t know if they will use it, but there is a moment that happened where we were in front of the mirror — maybe we weren’t alone, maybe it wasn’t just the two of us — and we couldn’t get through it without laughing. We laughed so hard trying to say these lines which we couldn’t say. I’m begging them to use it for the end credits. I said to them, ‘Now you have your after-credits blooper reel,’” she said.