Cosby Show star Malcolm-Jamal Warner dead at 54 after ‘accidental drowning'
He acted as Theodore Huxtable in the hit show alongside Bill Cosby - Dr Heathcliff 'Cliff' Huxtable.
2
Sources have confirmed his death to People and TMZ.
TMZ said that Warner had died after drowning.
The Cosby Show became a smash hit 30 years ago.
He played the only son of Cosby's character in the sitcom from 1984 to 1992.
In 2023, Warner told People: "I know I can speak for all the cast when I say The Cosby Show is something that we are all still very proud of."
.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
10 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Hailey Bieber kisses shirtless husband Justin during boozy party after he exposed marriage woes on new album
Hailey Bieber was pictured giving husband Justin Bieber a passionate kiss on Friday, as she shrugged off his recent album revelations about their marriage woes. The model, 28, shared the loved-up snap with her other half, 31, to her Instagram Stories, after attending a listening party for his new record at the exclusive Bird Street Club. The photo captured the pair in an intimate liplock, with a shirtless Justin holding the model close to him with both hands. Hailey, with her eyes closed, was pictured in a cropped black halter top, holding a yellow canned drink and her cellphone. Meanwhile, Justin showcased his tattooed arms, wearing only white basketball shorts with saggy jean shorts over them. The smooch comes after Justin seemingly laid bare their marriage struggles in the emotional lyrics of his new album, titled Swag – although has declared that he 'will not' leave her. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Justin Bieber (@lilbieber) Justin also shared a number of images from the party to his Instagram. One black and white photo showed him holding Hailey from behind, with her hand clasped over his. Yet another snap showed Hailey lovingly gazing at her spouse as he partied with his friends. Justin was pictured roaming through the party shirtless with a beer in his hand. His pants were secured by a brown belt with a silver, heart-shaped buckle, and his outfit was finalized with a pair of green socks. The Canadian crooner was surrounded by numerous pals and danced the night away. Another image showed him by the DJ booth, focused on something on the laptop. Justin also shared a video of himself performing a dance to one of his songs while sipping on his beer. It appears the singer took off a few articles of clothing during the party, as earlier in the night he was seen arriving to the event with Hailey while fully clothed. He was seen wearing a pink hoodie, matching funky sunglasses, a white cap on his head and platform slip-on shoes. He and Hailey held hands with one another while crossing the sidewalk. His latest album, Swag, which Justin released July 11, appears to allude to a challenging time between the couple, who have been married since 2018. Over the past few months, Justin has raised eyebrows with his hollow-eyed appearance and his social media posts. Fans have been harboring mounting concerns over Justin's health, and there have also been rumors of marital strife with Hailey. After months of rumors he has vowed to 'change' for his wife following a rocky period. In the album's second track, Daisies, Justin appears to be singing about him and Hailey being at loggerheads and failing to communicate clearly. The lyrics read: 'Throwin' petals like, "Do you love me or not?" / Head is spinnin', and it don't know when to stop / You said "Forever," babe, did you mean it or not? / Hold on, hold on. 'You leave me on read, babe, but I still get the message / Instead of a line it's three dots, but I can connect them / And if it ain't right, babe, you know I respect it / But if you need time, just take your time / Honey, I get it, I get it, I get it.' Hailey seemed to take aim at the 'losers' who have speculated about their marriage as she re-posted a photo of Justin's massive Swag billboard in NYC's Times Square earlier this month In track 10 of the 21-song track list, titled Walking Away, Justin sings about the couple 'taking a break' and 'testing patience.' 'Days go by so fast, don't wanna spend them with you / So tell me why you're throwing stones at my back / You know I'm defenseless,' he sings in the first verse. 'Girl, we better stop before we say some s*** / We've been testing our patience / I think we better off if we just take a break,' he continues. But the chorus and subsequent verses paint a picture of their enduring love despite strife. 'Baby, I ain't walking away / You were my diamond / Gave you a ring / I made you a promise / I told you, I'd change / It's just human nature / These growing pains / And baby, I ain't walking away,' he sings in the chorus. Ahead of the album's release, Hailey had some choice words for their fans as she took to social media to promote it. She took aim at the 'losers' who've speculated about their relationship as she re-posted a photo of Justin's massive Swag billboard in NYC's Times Square, captioned: 'Is it finally clocking to you f***ing losers?' She appeared to suggest that Justin's recent bizarre behavior wasn't the result of any marriage troubles but due to him being hard at work on his long-awaited music, which he partially recorded in Iceland back in April. Hailey also recently revealed what Justin is really like as a father and admitted she 'struggled to accept' her surprise pregnancy. The Rhode founder and the pop star welcomed their first child together, a baby boy called Jack, in August 2024. Speaking to Vogue Italia as their August 2025 cover girl, Hailey appeared to quash the rumors of a rift between her and Justin, as she gushed over him being an 'extraordinary' father, 'a natural', and 'seeing her as a goddess, a superhero'. However Hailey also opened up about her pregnancy with Jack, revealing it was unexpected. 'The pregnancy was hard for me to accept, it was a surprise and you have to deal with so many emotions,' she told the outlet. 'You realize that your life will never be the same again, yes, it changes in a positive way, but it will never be the same again.'
Daily Mail
10 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
David Letterman unleashes fury at CBS for canceling his successor Stephen Colbert
David Letterman has backed his successor Stephen Colbert and suggested CBS canceled The Late Show because he was 'always shooting his mouth off' about Donald Trump. The 78-year-old late-night legend created The Late Show in 1993 after NBC denied him the chance to succeed Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Colbert took over for Letterman in 2015 and took the show in a decidedly more political direction but despite leading in the ratings, a shrinking late-night landscape led CBS to claim losses in the tens of millions of dollars. In his first comment on the show's cancellation, Letterman noted that his show was more about political satire than his version of The Late Show but was still complimentary, calling the decision by CBS 'pure cowardice.' 'I think one day, if not today, the people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this, they're going to be embarrassed, because this is gutless,' he told former Late Show producers Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay. Letterman then said that he believed CBS was acting on behalf of Skydance CEO and incoming Paramount CEO David Ellison to make their lives easier after they acquire Paramount, taking away a constant critic of Trump. 'Hey boys, here's what we're gonna do: not only are we gonna get rid of that guy, we're gonna get rid of the entire franchise so you don't have to worry about another guy. It's gone,' Letterman said. The long-time talk show host noted CBS's $16million settlement with the Trump administration over a deceptively edited interview with election rival Kamala Harris, which Colbert had previously mocked as a 'big fat bribe.' He also referred to Ellison as a 'bottom feeder,' saying he should've bought a Dairy Queen instead of a television network. 'Stay out of this business.' He also tore into the accusations that the show lost so much money, with both Gaines and Barclay saying that they had cut budgets to help the network several times when they were at CBS. 'You're telling me losing this kind of money happened yesterday? I bet they were losing this kind of money a month ago, six weeks ago, or they have never been losing money,' he said. Letterman noted that despite the show losing tons of money, they're going to let him stay on the air for the next ten months continuing to lose it. 'That's another huge chunk of money they're gonna lose according to them. I don't think it was money, I think it was all to make sure the Ellisons were solid spending Dad's money,' he said, noting Ellison's father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. He said of the treatment of Colbert: 'They did not handle Stephen Colbert, the face of that network, in the way he deserves to have been handled.' Letterman echoed Colbert's own joking words from earlier this week when the former Comedy Central comic called himself 'a martyr.' 'For Stephen, I love this: he's a martyr, good for him. If you listen carefully, you can hear them unfolding chairs at the Hall of Fame for his induction,' he joked. Ultimately, he said he envies the position Colbert is now in with his liberal viewers. 'I only wish this could've happened to me. This would've been so great for me. Now we've all gotta kiss Stephen Colbert's ring now,' he quipped. The comedian's decade-long run as the host of CBS's late night flagship will end next May, with network insiders suggesting the top-rated show was canceled because it was losing anywhere from $40 to $100million per year. Trump posted a celebration on Truth Social when the news was announced, saying 'I absolutely love that Colbert' got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.' Colbert, who briefly addressed the move the day of its announcement, devoted much of his Monday show to the controversy, eventually uniting with almost every other liberal late-night talk show host in a show of support, as well as Adam Sandler and even Lin-Manuel Miranda. The 61-year-old comic opened after a standing ovation and a lengthy applause from the New York City crowd by saying ' cancel culture has gone too far' and then joked now that the show is ending, he can say whatever he feels. Colbert said sarcastically of Paramount: 'They made one mistake, they left me alive! For the next ten months, the gloves are off!' The Late Show host then referenced Trump's comments, turning to an 'Eloquence Cam' and said: 'How dare you, sir? Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism? Go f*** yourself.' He then referenced Trump stating in the same Truth Social post: 'I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.' Colbert replied: 'Nope, no, no. Absolutely not. Kimmel, I am the martyr. There's only room for one on this cross. And the view is fantastic from up here. I can see your house!' He also said that cancellation meant he could finally admit what he felt about the president. In contrast to his often over-the-top anti-Trump monologues, he dryly, quietly said: 'I don't care for him. Doesn't seem to have the skill set to be president. Just not a good fit, that's all.' He addressed his bosses at CBS - who he said 'have always been great partners' - before talking about Paramount's decision to cancel the show which he took over from David Letterman in 2015. 'How could it be a purely financial decision if The Late Show's is number one in ratings? A lot of folks are asking that question, mainly my staff's parents and spouses.' 'I could see us losing $24 million but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16 million, oh...' he quipped, naming the amount the company settled with Trump for over his 60 Minutes lawsuit. He went back to bashing Trump and the recent news accusing him of writing a 'bawdy' letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. 'I'll have more to say about all this after the commercial break. The only other story is a small one... the president is buddies with a pedophile.' Puck journalist Matthew Belloni revealed Colbert's 'lack of profitability ' Friday, hours after CNN first broke the news that the show was canceled because it was in the red. Belloni outlined how The Late Show - whose cancellation was announced last Thursday - costs $100m a year to produce, with Colbert, 61, getting paid between $15 million and $20 million a year to host. Colbert beats ABC and NBC rivals Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon in the ratings, but that still wasn't enough to save him. Late night shows have slumped in profitability in recent years as viewers shun the format in favor of streaming services or watching content on their phones. Advertiser revenue has slumped sharply even in the last three years, Puck reported, making it harder to pull Colbert's show out of the red. Colbert was reported to be 'not angry, actually' about his cancellation and was chatting with his staff in a 'matter-of-fact' way before Thursday's show, Puck reported. Colbert, who will broadcast his final show in May 2026, was first informed his show was on the chopping block around July 4, it is claimed. Paramount Co-CEO George Cheeks made the decision, Puck reported. He then went on vacation, giving bosses at CBS time to plot behind his back, CNN reported. He moved to share it as quickly as possible so that his staff would not learn of their impending unemployment via leaks to the press. All three major late night hosts - Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon - have become notorious for their regular rants about President Trump, which many viewers have complained are boring and off-putting. But Belloni said he didn't believe the famously anti-MAGA Colbert was axed to appease Donald Trump, who recently won a $15 million payout from CBS after suing them over a 60 Minutes interview with Harris he said was deceptively edited. The axing of Colbert has delighted Trump, who posted about it on his TruthSocial network earlier today. Colbert's ouster could also make it easier for CBS parent company Paramount's efforts to merge with media company Skydance in a deal that must be approved by Trump's Federal Communications Commission. The Late Show launched in 1993 under David Letterman to compete with longtime late night juggernaut The Tonight Show. Colbert took over from Letterman in 2015 after his retirement. More than three decades later, CBS's entry into the late night sphere sits at the top, with second-best Jimmy Kimmel Live! raking in an average of 1.772 million viewers. Colbert, by comparison, collects an average of 2.417 million. Colbert - who once played a conservative character on Comedy Central's satirical late night program The Colbert Report - often aired jokes at the conservative's expense. Trump celebrated the news of the show's cancellation as a result. 'I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,' he wrote in a Friday Truth Social post. 'I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert,' he added, before talking up right-wing Fox News star Greg Gutfeld. '[He's] better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show,' Trump added, referring to Jimmy Fallon.
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.
