Love Island's Harrison insists ‘I didn't mean to hurt anyone' as he returns to social media after quitting villa
The footballer, 22, quit the ITV2 dating show following a controversial villa stint.
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Viewers watched on as Harrison became involved in a dramatic love triangle with Lauren Wood and Toni Laites.
Taking to Instagram, he captioned the post: "Back on home turf and carrying every lesson with me.
"What a whirlwind, confusing, raw, beautiful in parts, and deeply humbling.
"I entered with the intention not to hurt anyone.
"Truthfully, although I didn't manage that, I leave with a heart more open, and a soul willing to learn.
"Life isn't always easy, it's felt, it's flawed, it's full of growth.
"Thank you to those who saw the good in me even when I struggled to see it myself. This is just the beginning."
One follower commented: "You and Toni could have won if you didn't treat her so horribly, anyways TONI & CACH to win."
Another wrote: "Better post an update on you and Lauren!!!!!"
A third added: "Well done you. It takes a big person to admit they were wrong and to apologise in the way that you did."
Harrison entered the villa as a bombshell and soon coupled up with Toni.
He made the switch to Lauren during the classic Casa Amor twist - and they later had sex in the villa.
Lauren, 26, who works as a dog walker in York, was booted from the villa on Wednesday night.
She begged Harrison to follow and, 24 hours later, he made the choice to go.
Love Island 2025 full lineup
Harry Cooksley: A 30-year-old footballer with charm to spare.
Shakira Khan: A 22-year-old Manchester-based model, ready to turn heads.
Megan Moore: A payroll specialist from Southampton, looking for someone tall and stylish.
Alima Gagigo: International business graduate with brains and ambition.
Tommy Bradley: A gym enthusiast with a big heart.
Helena Ford: A Londoner with celebrity connections, aiming to find someone funny or Northern.
Ben Holbrough: A model ready to make waves.
Dejon Noel-Williams: A personal trainer and semi-pro footballer, following in his footballer father's footsteps.
Aaron Buckett: A towering 6'5' personal trainer.
Conor Phillips: A 25-year-old Irish rugby pro.
Antonia Laites: Love Island's first bombshell revealed as sexy Las Vegas pool party waitress.
Yasmin Pettet: The 24-year-old bombshell hails from London and works as a commercial banking executive.
Emily Moran: Bombshell Welsh brunette from the same town as Love Island 2024 alumni Nicole Samuel.
Harrison Solomon: Pro footballer and model entering Love Island 2025 as a bombshell.
Giorgio Russo: The 30-year-old will be spending his summer in the sun, potentially his sister Alessia's successful tournament at the Euros in Switzerland.
Yaz Broom: Professional DJ from Manchester who appeared on X Factor 2016 in girl group Four of Diamonds.
Andrada Pop: Miss Bikini Ireland 2019 winner who hails from Dublin and works as a nail technician and personal trainer.
Emma Munro: Harry Cooksley's ex who entered as a bombshell and works as a hydrogeologist.
Departures:
Kyle Ashman: Axed after an arrest over a machete attack emerged. He was released with no further action taken and denies any wrongdoing.
Sophie Lee: A model and motivational speaker who has overcome adversity after suffering life-changing burns in an accident.
Blu Chegini: A boxer with striking model looks, seeking love in the villa.
Malisha Jordan: A teaching assistant from Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, who entered Love Island 2025 as a bombshell.
Shea Mannings: Works as a scaffolder day-to-day and plays semi-pro football on the side.
Caprice Alexandra: The 26-year-old bombshell owns a nursery in Romford.
Poppy Harrison: The bombshell broke up with her boyfriend after finding out she would be in the villa
Will Means: The fourth fittest farmer in the UK according to Farmers' Weekly in 2023 entered the villa as a bombshell
Megan Clarke: An Irish actress part of the OG line-up.
Remell Mullins: Boasts over 18million likes and 500k followers on TikTok thanks to his sizzling body transformation videos.
Alima Gagigo: 23-year-old personal banker from Glasgow who fancies herself as a 'good flirt'.
Ryan Bannister: 27-year-old gym hunk who entered the show as a bombshell.
Following his big villa exit, Harrison has since arrived back in the UK.
The controversial Islander was seen embracing his loved ones as they celebrated his return.
Meanwhile, he and Lauren are set to reunite on spin-off show Aftersun.
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The Sun
10 minutes ago
- The Sun
I feel sexier than ever after op to shed 4lbs from saggy 34HH boobs says Rhian Sugden… as she reveals stunning results
THEY'VE been her calling card since she was 19, and earned her an army of loyal fans, but Rhian Sugden's famous boobs have also caused her years of pain. Just four weeks ago the former Page 3 girl went under the knife to have her natural 34HH cups reduced and lifted - and now she has exclusively unveiled her new look for The Sun. 12 And the 38-year-old - who previously revealed her boobs had ballooned after she became mum to 16-month-old George - is delighted with the results. 'I feel so much sexier,' she says. 'I'm definitely lighter. I feel like my posture is better already. My confidence is back and I can wear clothes I've not been able to wear before. 'I'm bigger all over after having George and getting married, because I got comfortable, but I'm all right with that now because my boobs are more in proportion with my body.' In a major operation, lasting four and a half hours and costing over £10,000, surgeons removed 'four coke cans worth' of tissue weighing 4.5lbs. 'I thought they actually removed the nipple, but they don't,' she reveals. 'They remove the lower part of your boob, pull your skin down and then basically, use a cookie cutter to pull your nipple back through. 'I've got a mole that was on my upper chest that is now down by the nipple. My nipples have come up by 12 cms.' Although she was nervous about the double procedure - a breast reduction and uplift in one - Rhian was initially worried they hadn't gone far enough when she came round from the surgery. 'I was still out of it because of the general anesthetic. And I remember looking down and thinking they had put an implant in, not because they were big but because they were so perky,' she says. 'When the nurse came out I said: 'Have you put an implant in?' And she said, 'No that's all you.' 'I was still shocked at the size of them when I came out but the swelling has gone down now, and I feel like they're settling in a bit more. 'I told them I wanted a significant reduction but I still wanted to be big, which didn't really make sense. 'They took a good amount but, as much as I wanted to be smaller, in hindsight, I probably would have been upset because my boobs are a big part of my life. Still a petite size 10, Rhian's cup size has shrunk to an F, a month after surgery, and she reveals her left side now matches her right for the first time in her life. 'My boobs were a whole cup size different. The right one was always bigger so I'd always have to have one arm up, in every photoshoot, to make them look even,' she says. 'Most models have a best side, facially, but I had a best side for my body, to disguise the unevenness of my boobs. 'I got to pick the size of my nipples' 'Now they are symmetrical for the first time in my life and it feels weird not having to lift my right arm any more. 'I also got to pick the size of my nipples so they are now smaller and more symmetrical.' Two decades as a glamour girl have left her with few inhibitions and just minutes after we meet she whips off her bra to show me the scars - which run incredibly neatly around the nipples and down the underside of her boobs. 'I'm really happy with how they look,' she beams. 'I think he's done a really good job. We chose our surgeon well.' Rhian previously revealed husband Oliver Mellor was not keen on the idea of a reduction - but she says he is chuffed with the results. 'Oliver was a bit nervous at first because he likes big boobs and he was worried about the scarring,' she says. 'But he can't believe how well they've turned out. He's very pleased with them. He says I look like Pammy (Anderson) again because they're so perky. They look good and they're still a good size. A decent handful for him.' Oliver was a bit nervous at first because he likes big boobs and he was worried about the scarring. But he can't believe how well they've turned out. He's very pleased with them Rhian Sugden A tiny size 6 when she shot to fame at 19, as one of the UK's best-loved glamour models, Rhian was a 32D cup, even then. And after tying the knot with former Coronation Street star Oliver in 2018, then going through six years of gruelling IVF treatment before conceiving George, she put on a few pounds - most of which went to her chest. 12 'I actually went for a consultation for a reduction before I had George, because I thought I was never going to have babies but Dr Hussein, at the Pall Mall Clinic in Warrington, said, 'I'm happy to do it, but I think we should wait another year, just in case.' 'Then I got pregnant with George and they were twice as big when I went back this time. When I took my top off he said 'Oh yes, they are….' and I said, 'saggy?' And he went, 'Yes',' she laughs. 'They got bigger and bigger while I was pregnant and didn't deflate and I really struggled to breastfeed because of the size of them. 'They were bigger than George's head and I was worried about suffocating him. And because one of my boobs is bigger than the other I only really breastfed on one side so that one grew massive. It was a nightmare. 'I've always loved having big boobs, so it's not that I hated them, but it got to the point where they were unbearable and was seriously affecting my life.' Before going under the knife, in June, she revealed she was in constant pain because of her 34HH cups and she was on daily pain killers. 'Out of proportion' 'They're just so heavy. My back is in bits all the time, my posture is getting worse and I just want to feel better in myself,' she said. 'No matter what size bras I bought, or how much scaffolding there was, the dents on my shoulders got worse.' Her 'out of proportion' figure also meant dresses were impossible to buy, vest tops were a no-no, and she lived in trouser suits and blazers to 'cover up my top.' But after turning up to our shoot braless and in a boob tube - which she tells us, excitedly, she could never wear before - she was thrilled to slip into a backless denim dress as well as slipping on a vest top and shorts combo, without feeling top heavy. 'I can't wait to buy a whole new wardrobe,' she says. 'Before the op, I was starting to hate how I looked because I was having to buy size 14 tops just to cover my chest and I'd look more overweight than I was. 'I hated going out. I hate having pictures taken, which is part of my job, so it wasn't ideal. I was ready to go down a C cup. That's how desperate I was.' No devoted parents, Rhian and Oliver spent £150,000 on eight tough rounds of IVF and went through a traumatic birth, but says the arrival of George 'took all the pain away'. But recovery from the boob op was difficult because she couldn't lift her son and 'had to sleep sitting up for two weeks.' 'That was hard, because we co-sleep with George so I had to go in the spare room, and I just couldn't get comfortable. 'I still can't lie on my side because my boobs feel like inflatable balls.' As a new mum, she was also worried she wouldn't be able to breastfeed a second baby, should she get pregnant again - but was reassured by surgeons that everything is still in working order. But, while Oliver is keen to try for a sibling for George, Rhian jokes that she wants to 'enjoy my new boobs for a while first.' She is also keen to share her new look with her 500k fans - despite being trolled by many including one who started 'demanding his money back' and claiming she was making the 'worst mistake of my life.' But, brimming with confidence and beaming with health and happiness, Rhian is confident her loyal followers will like what they see. 'A lot of people were saying, 'You're going to ruin your career' but it's an overhaul and, if anything, I'm hoping it's gonna get better, because I'm new and improved. I've just had a refurb. 'People love a natural boob and I'm still natural. But whatever they think, I feel better in myself I'm confident to just be me.'
The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Generations of women have been disfigured': Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery, power, and Hollywood's age problem
I'm scheduled to speak to Jamie Lee Curtis at 2pm UK time, and a few minutes before the allotted slot I dial in via video link, to be met with a vision of the 66-year-old actor sitting alone in a darkened room, staring impassively into the camera. 'Morning,' she says, with comic flatness, as I make a sound of surprise that is definitely not a little scream. Oh, hi!! I say, Are you early or am I late? 'I'm always early,' says the actor, deadpan. 'Or as my elder daughter refers to me, 'aggressively early'.' Curtis is in a plain black top, heavy black-framed glasses and – importantly for this conversation – little or no makeup, while behind her in the gloom, a dog sleeps in a basket. She won't say what part of the US she's in beyond the fact it's a 'witness protection cabin in the woods' where 'I'm trying to have privacy' – an arch way, I assume, of saying she's not in LA – and immediately starts itemising other situations in which she has been known to be early: Hollywood premieres ('They tell me I can't go to the red carpet yet because it's not open and so my driver, Cal, and I drive around and park in the shade'); early-morning text messages ('I wake people up'); even her work schedule: 'I show up, do the work, and then I get the fuck out.' This is the short version; in full, the opening minutes of our conversation involve Curtis free-associating through references to the memory of her mother and stepfather missing her performance in a school musical in Connecticut; the negotiating aims of the makeup artists' union; the nickname by which she would like to be known if she ever becomes a grandmother ('Fifo' – short for 'first in first out'); and what, exactly, her earliness is about. Not, as you might imagine, anxiety, but: 'You know, honestly, I've done enough analysis of all this – it's control.' Curtis knows her early arrivals strike some people as rude. 'My daughter Annie says: 'People aren't ready for you.' And I basically say: 'Well, that's their problem. They should be ready.'' 'That's their problem' is, along with, 'I don't give a shit any more' a classic Curtis expression that goes a long way towards explaining why so many people love her – and they really do love her – a woman who on top of charming us for decades in a clutch of iconic roles, has crossed over, lately, into that paradoxical territory in which she is loved precisely because she's done worrying about what others think of her. Specifically, she doesn't care about the orthodoxies of an industry in which women are shamed into having cosmetic surgery before they hit 30. Curtis has spoken of having a procedure herself at 25, following a comment made on the set of a film that her eyes were 'baggy'. Regretting it, she has in the years since made the genuinely outlandish and inspiring decision to wear her hair grey and eschew surgical tweaks. That Curtis is the child of two Hollywood icons, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and thus an insider since birth, either makes this more surprising or else explains it entirely, but either way, she has become someone who appears to operate outside the usual Hollywood rules. 'I have become quite brusque,' says Curtis, of people making demands on her time when she's not open for business. 'And I have no problem saying: 'Back the fuck off.'' I can believe it. During the course of our conversation, Curtis's attitude – which is broadly charming, occasionally hectoring and appears to be driven by a general and sardonic belligerence – is that of someone pushing back against a lifetime of misconceptions, from which, four months shy of her 67th birthday, she finally feels herself to be free. Curtis is in a glorious phase of her career, one that, despite starring in huge hits – from the Halloween franchise and A Fish Called Wanda (1988) to Trading Places (1983), True Lies (1994) and the superlative Knives Out (2019) – has always eluded her. The fact is, celebrity aside, Curtis has never been considered a particularly heavyweight actor or been A-list in the conventional way. At its most trivial, this has required her to weather small slights, such as being ignored by the Women In Film community, with its tedious schedule of panels and events. ('I still exist outside of Women In Film,' she snaps. 'They're not asking me to their lunch.') And, more broadly, has seen Curtis completely overlooked by the Oscars since she shot Halloween, her first movie, at the age of 19. Well, all that has changed now. In 2023, Curtis won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the genre-bending movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. That same year, she appeared in a single episode of the multi-award-winning TV show The Bear as Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic mother of a large Italian clan – she calls it 'the most exhilarating creative experience I will ever have'. Anyone who saw this extraordinary performance is still talking about it, and it led to a larger role on the show. Doors that had always been shut to Curtis flew open. For years, she had tried and failed to get movie and TV projects off the ground. Now, she lists the forthcoming projects she had a hand in bringing to the screen: 'Freakier Friday, TV series Scarpetta, survival movie The Lost Bus, four other TV shows and two other movies.' She has become a 'prolific producer', she says, as well as a Hollywood elder and role model. All of which makes Curtis laugh – the fact that, finally, 'at 66, I get to be a boss'. You'd better believe she'll be making the most of it. The movie Curtis and I are ostensibly here to talk about is Freakier Friday, the follow-up to Freaky Friday, the monster Disney hit of 2003 in which Curtis and Lindsay Lohan appeared as a mother and daughter who switch bodies with hilarious consequences. I defy anyone who enjoyed the first film not to feel both infinitely aged by revisiting the cast more than 20 years on, and also not to find it a wildly enjoyable return. The teenage Lohan of the first movie is now a 37-year-old mother of 15-year-old Harper, played by Julia Butters, while the introduction of a second teenager – Harper's mortal enemy Lily, played by Sophia Hammons – allows for a four-way body swap in which Curtis-as-grandma is inhabited by Hammons' British wannabe influencer. If it lacks the simplicity of the first movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to taking my 10-year-old girls when it opens next month. It is also a movie that presented Curtis with an odd set of challenges. She has a problem with 'pretty'. When Curtis herself was a teenager, she says, she was 'cute but not pretty'. She watched both her parents' careers atrophy after their youthful good looks started to wane. Part of her shtick around earliness is an almost existential refusal to live on Hollywood's timeline, because, she says: 'I witnessed my parents lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their life and their livelihood, when the industry rejected them at a certain age. I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that's very painful.' As a result, says Curtis: 'I have been self-retiring for 30 years. I have been prepping to get out, so that I don't have to suffer the same as my family did. I want to leave the party before I'm no longer invited.' In the movie, Curtis was allowed to keep her grey hair (although it looks shot through with blond) but her trademark pixie cut was replaced with something longer and softer. I take it with a pinch when she says things such as, 'I'm an old lady' and, 'I'm going to die soon' – even in age-hating Hollywood, this seems overegged – but one takes the point that she found the conventional aesthetic demands of Freakier Friday, in which she 'had to look pretty, I had to pay attention to [flattering] lighting, and clothes and hair and makeup and nails', much harder than playing a dishevelled alcoholic in The Bear. On the other hand, Curtis is a pro and, of course, gave Disney the full-throated, zany-but-still-kinda-hot grandma they wanted. (There is a scene in which she tries to explain various board games – Boggle, Parcheesi – to the owl-eyed teens that reminds you just how fine a comic actor she is.) It's the story of how Freakier Friday came about, however, that really gives insight into who Curtis is: an absolute, indefatigable and inveterate hustler. 'I am owning my hustle, now,' she says and is at her most impressive, her most charming and energised when she is talking about the hustle. To wit: Curtis was on a world tour promoting the Halloween franchise that made her name and that enjoyed a hugely successful reboot in 2018, when something about the crowd response struck her. 'In every single city I went to, the only movie they asked me about besides Halloween was Freaky Friday – was there going to be a sequel?' When she got back from the tour, she called Bob Iger, Disney's CEO. 'I said: 'Look, I don't know if you're planning on doing [a sequel], but Lindsay is old enough to have a teenager now, and I'm telling you the market for that movie exists.'' As the project came together, Curtis learned that Disney was planning to release Freakier Friday straight to streaming. 'And I called Bob Iger' – it's at this point you start to imagine Iger seeing Curtis's name flash up on his phone and experiencing a slight drop in spirits – 'and I called David Greenbaum [Disney Live Action president], and I called Asad Ayaz, who's the head of marketing, and I said: 'Guys, I have one word for you: Barbie. If you don't think the audience that saw Barbie is going to be the audience that goes and sees Freakier Friday, you're wrong.'' This is what Curtis means when she refers to herself as 'a marketing person', or 'a weapon of mass promotion', and she has done it for ever. It's what she did in 2002 when she lobbied More magazine to let her pose in her underwear and no makeup – 'They didn't come to me and say: 'Hey Jamie, how about you take off your clothes and show America that you're chubby?' The More magazine thing happened because I said it should happen, and I even titled the piece: True Thighs.' And it is what she was doing a few weeks before our interview when she turned up to the photoshoot in LA bearing a bunch of props she had ordered from Amazon, including oversized plastic lips and a blond wig. Curtis says: 'There are many, many actresses who love the dress up, who love clothes, who love fashion, who love being a model. I. Hate. It. I feel like I am having to wrestle with your idea of me versus my idea of me. Because I've worked hard to establish who I am, and I don't want you to … I have struggled with it my whole life.' Curtis is emphatic that her ideas be accurately interpreted and, before our meeting, sent an email via her publicist explaining her thinking behind the shoot. 'The wax lips is my statement against plastic surgery. I've been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex, who've disfigured themselves. The wax lips really sends it home.' Obviously, the word 'genocide' is very strong and risks causing offence, given its proper meaning. To Curtis, however, it is accurate. 'I've used that word for a long time and I use it specifically because it's a strong word. I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there's a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances. And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the filter face is what people want. I'm not filtered right now. The minute I lay a filter on and you see the before and after, it's hard not to go: 'Oh, well that looks better.' But what's better? Better is fake. And there are too many examples – I will not name them – but very recently we have had a big onslaught through media, many of those people.' Well, at the risk of sounding harsh, one of the people implicated by Curtis's criticism is Lindsay Lohan, her Freakier Friday co-star and a woman in her late 30s who has seemingly had a lot of cosmetic procedures at a startlingly young age (though Lohan denies having had surgery). In terms of mentoring Lohan, with whom Curtis remained friends after making the first film, she says: 'I'm bossy, very bossy, but I try to mind my own business. She doesn't need my advice. She's a fully functioning, smart woman, creative person. Privately, she's asked me questions, but nothing that's more than an older friend you might ask.' But given the stridency of Curtis's position on cosmetic surgery, don't younger women feel judged in her presence? Isn't it awkward? 'No. No. Because I don't care. It doesn't matter. I'm not proselytising to them. I would never say a word. I would never say to someone: what have you done? All I know is that it is a never-ending cycle. That, I know. Once you start, you can't stop. But it's not my job to give my opinion; it's none of my business.' As for Lohan, Curtis says: 'I felt tremendous maternal care for Lindsay after the first movie, and continued to feel that. When she'd come to LA, I would see her. She and I have remained friends, and now we're sort of colleagues. I feel less maternal towards her because she's a mommy now herself and doesn't need my maternal care, and has, obviously, a mom – Dina's a terrific grandma.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The general point about the horror of trying to stay young via surgery is sensible and, of course, I agree. At the back of my mind, however, I have a small, pinging reservation that I can't quite put my finger on. I suggest to Curtis that she has natural advantages by virtue of being a movie star, which, on the one hand, of course, makes her more vulnerable around issues of ageing, but on the other hand, she's naturally beautiful and everyone loves her, and most average women who – 'I have short grey hair!' she protests. 'Other women can –' They can, of course! But you must have a physical confidence that falls outside the normal – 'No! No!' She won't have it. 'I feel like you're trying to say: 'You're in some rarefied air, Jamie.'' I'm not! She responds: 'By the way, genetics – you can't fuck with genetics. You want to know where my genetics lie?' She lifts up an arm and wobbles her bingo wings at me. 'Are you kidding me? By the way, you're not going to see a picture of me in a tank top, ever.' This is Curtis's red line. 'I wear long-sleeve shirts; that's just common sense.' She gives me a beady look. 'I challenge you that I'm in some rarefied air.' I think about this afterwards to try and clarify my objection, which I guess is this: that the main reason women in middle age dye their hair is to stave off invisibility, which, with the greatest respect, is not among the veteran movie star's problems. But it's a minor quibble given what I genuinely believe is Curtis's helpful and iconoclastic gesture. And when she talks about cosmetic surgery as addiction, she should know. Curtis was an alcoholic until she got sober at 40 and is emphatic and impressive on this subject, the current poster woman – literally: she's on signs across LA for an addiction charity with the tagline: 'My bravest thing? Getting sober'. I'm curious about how her intense need for control worked, in those years long ago, alongside her addiction? 'I am a controlled addict,' she says. 'In recovery we talk about how, in order to start recovering, you have to hit what you call a 'bottom'. You have to crash and burn, lose yourself and your family and your job and your resources in order to know that the way you were living didn't work. I refer to myself as an Everest bottom; I am the highest bottom I know. When I acknowledged my lack of control, I was in a very controlled state. I lost none of the external aspects of my life. The only thing I had lost was my own sense of myself and self-esteem.' Externally, during those years of addiction, she seemed to be doing very well. Her career boomed. She married Christopher Guest, the actor, screenwriter and director, and they have two children and have stayed married for more than 40 years. (There's no miracle to this. As Curtis puts it, wryly: 'It's just that we have chosen to stay married. And be married people. And we love each other. And I believe we respect each other. And I'm sure there's a little bit of hatred in there, too.') I wonder, then, whether Curtis's success during those years disguised how serious a situation she was in with her addiction? 'There's no one way to be an addict or an alcoholic. People hide things – I was lucky, and I am ambitious, and so I never let that self-medication get in the way of my ambition or work or creativity. It never bled through. No one would ever have said that had been an issue for me.' Where was the cost? 'The external costs are awful for people; but the internal costs are more sinister and deadly, because to understand that you are powerless over something other than your own mind and creativity is something. But that was a long time ago. I'm an old lady now.' She is doing better than ever. With the Oscar under her belt, Curtis has just returned in the new season of The Bear and has a slew of projects – many developed with Jason Blum, the veteran horror producer with whom she has a development deal – coming down the line. Watching her bravura performance as Donna Berzatto, I did wonder if playing an alcoholic had been in any way traumatic. She flashes me a look of pure vehemence. 'Here's what's traumatic: not being able to express your range as an artist. That's traumatic. To spend your entire public life holding back range. And depth. And complexity. And contradiction. And rage. And pain. And sorrow.' She builds momentum: 'And to have been limited to a much smaller palette of creative, emotional work. 'For me, it was an unleashing of 50 years of being a performer who was never considered to have any range. And so the freedom, and the confidence, that I was given by Chris [Storer, the show's creator], and the writing, which leads you … everywhere you need to go – it was exhilarating.' She continues: 'It took no toll. The toll has been 40 years of holding back something I know is here.' Well, there she is, the Curtis who thrills and inspires. Among the many new projects is The Lost Bus, a survival disaster movie for AppleTV+ about a bus full of children trying to escape wildfires. The idea came to Curtis while she was driving on the freeway, listening to an NPR report on the deadly wildfires of 2018 in the small town of Paradise, California. She pulled over and called Blum; the movie, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, drops later this year. For another project, she managed to persuade Patricia Cornwell, the superstar thriller writer, to release the rights for her Scarpetta series, which, as well as producing, Curtis will star in alongside Nicole Kidman. This burst of activity is something Curtis ascribes to the 'freedom' she derived from losing 'all vanity', and over the course of our conversation 'freedom' is the word she most frequently uses to describe what she values in life. Freedom is a particularly loaded and precious concept for those on the other side of addiction and, says Curtis, 'I have dead relatives; I have parents who both had issues with drinking and drugs. I have a dead sibling. I have numerous friends who never found the freedom, which is really the goal – right? Freedom.' It's a principle that also extends to her family. Curtis's daughter Ruby, 29, is trans, and I ask how insulated they are from Donald Trump's aggressively anti-trans policies. 'I want to be careful because I protect my family,' says Curtis. 'I'm an outspoken advocate for the right of human beings to be who they are. And if a governmental organisation tries to claim they're not allowed to be who they are, I will fight against that. I'm a John Steinbeck student – he's my favourite writer – and there's a beautiful piece of writing from East of Eden about the freedom of people to be who they are. Any government, religion, institution trying to limit that freedom is what I need to fight against.' There are many, many other subjects to cycle through, including Curtis's friendship with Mariska Hargitay, whose new documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, hit Curtis particularly hard, not least because 'Jayne's house was next to Tony Curtis's house – that big pink house on Carolwood Drive that Tony Curtis lived in and Sonny and Cher owned prior to him.' (I don't know if referring to her dad as 'Tony Curtis,' is intended to charm, but it does.) There's also a school reunion she went to over a decade ago; the feeling she has of being 'a 14-year-old energy bunny'; the fact we've been pronouncing 'Everest' wrong all this time; the role played by lyrics from Justin Timberlake's Like I Love You in her friendship with Lindsay Lohan; and the 'Gordian knot' of what happens when not being a brand becomes your brand. Curtis could, one suspects, summon an infinite stream of enthusiasms and – perhaps no better advertisement for ageing, this – share urgent thoughts about every last one of them. In an industry in which people weigh their words, veil their opinions and pander to every passing ideal, she has gone in a different direction, one unrestrained by the usual timidities. Or as she puts it with her typical take-it-or-leave-it flatness, 'the freedom to have my own mind, wherever it's going to take me. I'm comfortable with that journey and reject the rest.' Freakier Friday is in Australian cinemas from 7 August and from 8 August in the UK and US Jamie Lee Curtis wears: (leopard look) jacket and skirt, by Rixo; T-shirt and belt, both by AllSaints; boots, by Dr Martens; tights, by Wolford; (tartan look) suit, by Vivienne Westwood, from tights, by Wolford; shoes, by By Far. Fashion stylist: Avigail Collins at Forward Artists. Set stylist: Stefania Lucchesi at Saint Luke Artists. Hair: Sean James at Aim Artists. Makeup: Erin Ayanian Monroe at Cloutier Remix.
Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The 30 greatest guitar riffs of all time
We're going to fall out about this, obviously. But here we go. Let's just start with the idea that a riff is a short, repeated musical figure that can be melodic or rhythmic. We've allowed for a bit of progression – let's call it prog – or we're going to have all sorts of trouble getting some great guitarists in here (looking at you, Brian May). And we're going to demand that the riff is sort of the main hook of the song. We've tried to avoid bass riffs, unless they've clearly become the lead riff. And we've favoured electric guitar over acoustic guitar, with exceptions. It's strictly one entry per guitarist in this list, too. Apart from that, it's a bun fight. This could easily run to a hundred riffs – if your favourite isn't there, let us know in the comments section. As far as methodology goes, this was always going to be subjective, but hours and hours have gone into it, from scouring guitar mags to dredging the depths of online forums, polling everyone I know, listening to dedicated playlists, putting things in, taking things out, leaving out lots of my own favourites, accepting that every genre of music and every set of fans has its own hierarchy for this stuff and will know that this list is plain wrong. There may be also be a slight Anglocentric bias that will wind up Strokes, Fontaines and Aerosmith fans, equally. But above all, guitar riffs ultimately tell a remarkable story of ongoing musical evolution. So here goes… (or skip to the top 10) 30. Nutbush City Limits – Ike & Tina Turner (1973) This could just as easily have been in the top 10 but we needed something great to kick us off. I've only moved it here because this crunchy, funk stomper is actually two guitars melded together. It's made more fun by the fact that there's a mystery about who played them. Rock legend would have it that Marc Bolan, of all people, played the fuzz rhythm and James Lewis, from Ike's backing band, the wah-wah that wreathes around it like a snake.
