Halloween Kills star Jamie Lee Curtis reveals her greatest fears

Jamie Lee Curtis has now been scaring the hell out of cinemagoers for over four decades with her appearances in The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, and, of course, her portrayal of the Michael Myers-battling Laurie Strode in the Halloween franchise. With the most recent entry in the series, Halloween Kills, debuting in theaters and on Peacock Oct. 15, we asked the actress to tell us what keeps her up at night. Read on to find out some of her biggest fears below.

HORROR MOVIES

I'm brave, but I am afraid of scary things. When I was 15, my parents (legendary actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis) screened The Exorcist and my friends teased me the next day because I was so freaked out. I loathe being scared by scary movies. I scare so easily. It's the reason that I'm so good at [being in them]. It's a natural response for me. I've had this awakening. Why did I end up making my mark in a genre that I loathe? I would be one of those people who would say, you couldn't pay me to go to a horror movie. Because I hate it. [But] actually, you can pay me to be scared and you can pay me well!

MARE OF EASTTOWN

I love trying to untangle the Gordian knot of a good mystery, but scary things scare me. I watched Mare of Easttown and my head was under the pillow. My husband (actor-director Christopher Guest) will attest that any time the [scary] music starts, I immediately have my hands up in front of my eyes or I've covered my ears.

RAGE

The thing that was interesting to me, and continues to be interesting to me, about David Gordon Green and Danny McBride is that they wrote a movie about female trauma [2018's Halloween, which the pair co-wrote with Jeff Fradley] before the #MeToo movement, where women were standing up and saying, "Me too, I suffered trauma at the hands of others, and I am not going to be quiet anymore." So right in the middle of the #MeToo movement, we release the movie, about a woman who had been traumatized for 40 years and was taking her life back. Now, you might say, "Wow, weren't they lucky that they made a movie that crested right when the female trauma conversation was happening globally?" Well, guess what? David Gordon Green and Danny McBride made a second [Halloween Kills] about rage, about a mob of angry people who don't trust the government, who don't trust the police who don't trust the authorities to get the job done. They're going to do the job themselves. And then look what happened on Jan. 6 in the United States of America. A mob descended on the Capitol, and were it not for those four brave officers as well as all of the other Capitol police, D.C. police, and civilians who stood up and held the line, [think about] the possibility of what that mob could have done to members of Congress. These people were coming to kill people. That's what the movie's about. Now how the f--- did David Gordon Green and Danny McBride know that the follow-up to trauma was rage? So if you ask me what scares me, rage scares me. Unbridled, unrestrained, out-of-your mind rage, that yields mob mentality and mob rule. That scares me.

NIGHT SHOOTS

I go to bed at 6:30, so for me, night shooting is physically painful. My agents know that if the word night is in the title of the movie, don't even bring it to me. Even if they're remaking The Night of the Iguana, I'm like, "F--- it. Pass!"

A version of this story appears in the October issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands now and available here. Don't forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

Related content:

• First Halloween Kills reviews brutally split over 'darker, meaner, disturbing' sequel
• Jamie Lee Curtis strikes back at Michael Myers in Halloween Kills trailer: 'Evil dies tonight'
• Kyle Richards returns to the Halloween franchise 43 years after starring in the original film