by Actress Jamie Lee Curtis was honored with the Career Achievement Award from AARP The Magazine. But it’s not the first time the publication – which shines a spotlight on people aged 50 and over – has shown the star some love.
In an Instagram post shared ahead of the magazine’s annual Movies for Grownups Awards, Curtis, 64, reflected on appearing topless on the cover of the May/June 2008 issue. Then 50, the Halloween star posed nude in a pool for the shoot with Andrew Eccles lens, which caused quite a stir.
“People lost their minds that I was TOPLESS!” Curtis, who just scored her first Oscar nomination for her supporting role Everything Everywhere Everything at once, shared. “A perfect statement about how weird people are about older people having any sexuality.”
Curtis’ position received support from the likes of Naomi Watts and her former Crazy Friday co-star, Lindsay Lohan. Supermodel Paulina Porizkova, no stranger to provocative photo shoots that challenge conventional thinking about aging, commented, “Yeah. Apparently older women should give that up.”
Curtis was unapologetic about aging on her own terms. In the 2008 issue, the True lies star talked about letting her hair go gray — now silver, almost 15 years later — and learning to love the grown-up version of herself.
“I want to be older,” she told the magazine. “I actually think there’s an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel much better now than I did when I was 20. I’m stronger, I’m smarter in every way, I’m so much less crazy than I was then .”
In more recent years, the Trading places actress has spoken out about society’s obsession with plastic surgery — which she’s admitted to trying and hating — and using filters to look younger.
“I’ve also been an advocate for not messing with your face,” she said during an appearance on the British talk show Lorraine in 2021. “And the term ‘anti-aging’. What? What are you talking about? We all grow old. We all die. Why do you want to look 17 when you are 70? I want to look 70 when I” m 70!”
Last year, Curtis shared that she focuses more on acceptance and less on vanity.
“When I brush my teeth, of course I look in the mirror,” she said during a talk at the Radical Reframing Aging Summit. “When I’m plucking my eyebrows, of course I look in the mirror. But when I get out of the shower, I just don’t stare at my now 63-year-old body in the mirror. I’m not denying what I look like, of course, I’ve seen how I look. I try to live in acceptance. When I look in the mirror, it’s harder for me to be in acceptance. I’m more critical. Whereas, if I just don’t look, I don’t worry about it as much.”
At the Movies for Grownups Awards this weekend, Curtis expressed her appreciation for getting older.
“At the end of the day, what I like most about adults is that we are more alike than we are different — adults adapt and show up every day, no matter how our cards were dealt,” she said in her acceptance speech. “It is the beauty of adults and I am honored to be considered one, for it is a badge of honor that I proudly wear on my face, on my body, in my mind and in my soul.”
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