Jamie Lee Curtis is the actress who turned a $300,000 slasher into a career, playing Laurie Strode across seven Halloween films between 1978 and 2022 while picking up an Oscar, an Emmy and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star along the way. Below I run through every horror movie and show worth your time, with honest scare ratings and a note on who each one suits. Spoilers are fenced off near the end.
From Psycho’s daughter to Haddonfield
Curtis was born on November 22, 1958, in Santa Monica, California, to Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. That matters for horror fans: her mother is the woman stabbed in the shower in Psycho (1960), so the “scream queen” title was practically inherited.
She went to the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, then boarded at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut, and had a short stint at the University of the Pacific before acting pulled her back to Hollywood. Her first credits were TV guest spots in 1977, then John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill cast her as Laurie Strode. Carpenter has been open that the Leigh connection helped the pitch, but it was her performance that made the movie.
Away from horror, she won Golden Globes for the sitcom Anything But Love and for True Lies (1994), got her Walk of Fame star in 1998, and took Best Supporting Actress at the 95th Academy Awards on March 12, 2023, for Everything Everywhere All at Once. In 2024 she added an Emmy for playing Donna Berzatto in The Bear. She has been married to Christopher Guest since 1984. None of that is why you are here, though.
Jamie Lee Curtis horror movies at a glance
| Title | Year | Subgenre | Scare level | Where to watch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Halloween | 1978 | Slasher | 4/5 | Digital rental; Shudder and Peacock rotate it |
| The Fog | 1980 | Supernatural | 3/5 | Digital rental; Scream Factory Blu-ray |
| Prom Night | 1980 | Slasher | 2/5 | Digital rental; Synapse Blu-ray |
| Terror Train | 1980 | Slasher | 3/5 | Digital rental; Scream Factory Blu-ray |
| Road Games | 1981 | Road thriller | 3/5 | Digital rental; Scream Factory Blu-ray |
| Halloween II | 1981 | Slasher | 3/5 | Digital rental; Peacock rotates it |
| Halloween H20 | 1998 | Slasher | 3/5 | Digital rental; Paramount+ rotates it |
| Halloween: Resurrection | 2002 | Slasher | 2/5 | Digital rental |
| Halloween 2018 trilogy | 2018 to 2022 | Slasher | 4/5 | Peacock; digital rental |
| Scream Queens | 2015 to 2016 | Horror comedy TV | 1/5 | Hulu; Disney+ in some regions |
Streaming rotations change monthly, so treat the last column as a starting point rather than gospel.
Halloween (1978)
Compass International shot this in about 20 days on a budget of roughly $300,000, and it went on to earn tens of millions and kickstart the whole slasher cycle. If you have read our piece on john carpenter halloween you know the production story. What I want to stress here is how much of the film rests on Curtis. Laurie is the bookish babysitter who notices the man in the mask when nobody else does, and the final 20 minutes, with her hiding in the closet and improvising a coat hanger as a weapon, still play beautifully to a first-time crowd.
Nearly no blood. The fear comes from Dean Cundey’s widescreen framing and Carpenter’s piano theme. This is the one I hand to people who think they can’t handle horror.
The Fog (1980)
Carpenter and Hill reunited with Curtis for a ghost story about drowned sailors returning to a California coastal town on its centenary. Curtis plays Elizabeth, a hitchhiker who falls in with Tom Atkins, and Janet Leigh appears as the town organiser, which makes this the first time mother and daughter shared a horror movie.
It is slower and moodier than Halloween, more campfire tale than slasher. Adrienne Barbeau’s radio DJ gets the best material, but Curtis sells the panic in the final siege. Good pick for anyone who wants atmosphere over body count.
Prom Night (1980)
Paul Lynch’s Canadian slasher gave Curtis her first lead outside Carpenter’s orbit, playing Kim Hammond, whose classmates are being picked off on prom night for a childhood crime. Leslie Nielsen plays her father, straight-faced, two years before Airplane changed how we see him.
It is slow in the first hour, and the killer’s reveal is easy to guess. The reason it earns a place is the disco dance sequence, where Curtis genuinely commits, and a decent axe-in-the-dark finale. Treat it as a party movie.
Terror Train (1980)
Roger Spottiswoode’s film traps a costume party aboard a moving train while a killer swaps masks between murders. Curtis is Alana, the one member of the fraternity prank gone wrong who carries real guilt, and a young David Copperfield plays the on-board magician. Yes, that David Copperfield.
The single-location setup and the shifting costumes make it tighter and nastier than Prom Night. For my money it is the best of her non-Carpenter 1980 run.
Road Games (1981)
An Australian production from Richard Franklin, who went on to direct Psycho II, this is Rear Window on the Nullarbor. Stacy Keach is a trucker who suspects a van driver of murdering hitchhikers; Curtis is the hitchhiker nicknamed “Hitch” who climbs into his cab.
Her role is smaller than the poster suggests, but she brings warmth to a film that could have been cold. The scares are Hitchcockian: suspicion, long highways and one very bad motel. Recommended for thriller fans who find slashers silly.
Halloween II (1981)
Rick Rosenthal’s sequel picks up the same night, with Laurie sedated in Haddonfield Memorial while Michael stalks the hospital corridors. Carpenter and Hill wrote and produced for Universal, and the kills got far meaner: a scalding hot tub, a syringe to the eye.
Curtis spends much of it in a hospital bed, which frustrated her at the time, but the final hospital chase with Donald Pleasence is strong. It also contains the plot twist that reshaped the series for decades, so I will keep it in the spoiler section below.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
Curtis pushed for this one herself. Steve Miner directed for Dimension Films, Kevin Williamson shaped the story, and Laurie is now a headmistress living under a false name with a teenage son played by Josh Hartnett in his film debut. Janet Leigh has a lovely cameo, parked next to the car from Psycho.
The film skips Halloween 4, 5 and 6 entirely, so the watch order is 1978, 1981, then this. The tone is slick late-90s teen horror, but Curtis, picking up a fire axe and going hunting, gives it a spine. Great choice for a Halloween double bill with Scream.
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
I include this for completeness. Rosenthal returned to direct a story about a webcast reality show inside the Myers house, with Busta Rhymes doing kung fu on Michael. Curtis appears only in the opening section, and she has said since that she took the role out of contractual obligation.
Her scenes are the best part. The remaining 75 minutes are a reminder of why the series needed a reset.
Halloween, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends (2018 to 2022)
David Gordon Green’s trilogy for Blumhouse and Universal wipes every sequel off the board and follows only the 1978 film. Laurie is now a paranoid survivalist with a fortified house, an estranged daughter (Judy Greer) and a granddaughter (Andi Matichak). The first film opened to more than $76 million in North America, the biggest opening in the franchise’s history, and Curtis’s trembling, furious performance is why.
Halloween Kills (2021) is the mob-violence middle chapter, extremely gory and the weakest. Halloween Ends (2022) takes a strange detour into a new character’s story before giving Laurie her send-off. Both released on Peacock the same day as cinemas. Watch the first one regardless; finish the trilogy if you are invested in Laurie rather than Michael.
Scream Queens (2015 to 2016)
Ryan Murphy’s Fox series cast Curtis as Dean Cathy Munsch, running a university sorority where a Red Devil killer is loose. Season two moves the whole thing into a hospital. The show is a comedy first, spoofing the tropes she helped invent, with a recreation of her mother’s shower scene in one episode.
It earned her a Golden Globe nomination in 2016 and was cancelled after 23 episodes. Good for teens who want the slasher iconography without the nightmares. If you enjoy a horror veteran sending up their own legend, pair it with our look at tim curry doing something similar across his career.
Bonus: she voices Madame Leota, the head in the crystal ball, in Disney’s Haunted Mansion (2023). Fun, family-safe, scare level 1.
Where the Laurie Strode timelines split
Spoiler warning
This section spoils the twists in Halloween II, Halloween H20, Halloween: Resurrection and Halloween Ends.
Halloween II (1981) reveals that Laurie is Michael Myers’s younger sister, adopted after their parents died. That one line, added by Carpenter for the sequel, drove every film through Resurrection. H20 ends with Laurie decapitating Michael. Resurrection then undoes that by revealing she beheaded a paramedic in a swapped mask, and Michael kills her in a psychiatric hospital within the first 15 minutes.
The 2018 film throws all of that out. Laurie and Michael are not related, which a character explicitly dismisses as a rumour, and she has spent 40 years preparing to kill him. Halloween Ends finally lets her do it, feeding his body into a shredder in front of the town. So if a friend asks whether Laurie is Michael’s sister, the honest answer is: in the 1981 to 2002 continuity, yes; in the 2018 trilogy, no.
If you liked this
Scream (1996), because Wes Craven built Sidney Prescott in Laurie’s image.
The Fog (2005 remake), only to appreciate how much Curtis and Carpenter brought to the original.
Psycho (1960), to see where the family business started.
FAQ
What was Jamie Lee Curtis’s first horror movie?
Halloween (1978), directed by John Carpenter, was her film debut. She had done TV guest work the year before.
How many Halloween movies is she in?
Seven as Laurie Strode: Halloween (1978), Halloween II (1981), H20 (1998), Resurrection (2002), Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022). She also has an uncredited voice role as the phone operator in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), which otherwise has no Myers story.
Is Janet Leigh in any of her daughter’s films?
Yes. Janet Leigh appears in The Fog (1980) and has a cameo as Norma Watson, the school secretary, in Halloween H20 (1998).
Which one should I watch first?
The 1978 Halloween, then go straight to the 2018 film. That pairing is the cleanest story and the strongest showcase for Curtis in the role.