Why Jamie Lee Curtis Had Trouble Distinguishing Her Real Life From ‘Freaky Friday’ While Filming

Freaky Friday is one of the most iconic Disney films of the early 2000s, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as a mother and daughter who do not get along but suddenly were forced to switch bodies.

Curtis recently looked back on her famous role in the movie, and she revealed that she had trouble distinguishing the role from her real life.

Jamie Lee Curtis landed her ‘Freaky Friday’ role at the last minute

It’s hard for fans to imagine Freaky Friday without Curtis, but the actor was not originally supposed to be in the film.

In a 2019 Vanity Fair video, Curtis explained that she was busy touring to promote one of her children’s books at the time. However, the original actor playing Tess “pulled out of the movie,” and Curtis’ agent told her that Disney had asked her to be the replacement.

Because of this, Curtis did not have a lot of time to prepare. She said, “It was a Thursday. They sent me the script, I read it on the plane, I met the director on Saturday, I had my hair dyed red on Sunday, and I was shooting on Monday.”

Why Curtis had trouble distinguishing her real life from the movie

Actors don’t always relate to their characters, but Curtis actually shared some similarities with Tess.

“What I remember is at that point, I had a 15-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old child [a lot like my character],” Curtis told Entertainment Weekly. She also added that there was a “dance of trying to figure out what my real life was, what my movie life was.”

Curtis and her husband, Christopher Guest, have two daughters: Annie (born 1986) and Ruby (born 1996). Meanwhile, Tess has a teenage daughter, Anna, and an elementary-school-aged son named Harry.

Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are still friends

It has been almost 20 years since Freaky Friday was first released, and Curtis is still friends with Lohan.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Curtis told fans at a recent event in Mexico City, “Lindsay Lohan and I are friends…. Lindsay Lohan and I text. She texted me the other day, she’s in Ireland making [her new Netflix movie Irish Wish].”

In fact, whenever Lohan contacts her, Curtis would give Lohan a Freaky Friday-related test to make sure she really is speaking to Lohan.

“The test for her was, ‘What was the song that you and I were trying to learn, the rap [that’s] in the middle of the song while we were sitting in the car doing the scene while we were eating French fries?'” Curtis shared. “The answer is the Justin Timberlake song ‘Like I Love You.'”

Curtis added, “She and I were playing the tape, then we’d go back and rewind, the two of us were writing the lyrics to that whole rap in the car in Freaky Friday.”

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