Known for her many Hollywood acting credits, Jamie Lee Curtis is just one of Hollywood’s many famous stars. Her and her husband, Christopher Guest, adopted both of their children, a son and daughter, nine years apart, but was Jamie Lee Curtis herself adopted?
Jamie Lee Curtis was not adopted. Her parents are the late actor, Tony Curtis and actress, Janet Leigh, who are described as Hollywood’s “1950s glamour couple.”
Read more below about the childhood that Jamie Lee Curtis endured and her personal reasons for adopting both of her children.
A Tumultuous Childhood
Curtis was born in Santa Monica, California, to actor Tony Curtis and actress Janet Leigh.
Her father was Jewish, the son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants. According to her mother’s book, There Really Was a Hollywood, two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish, while the rest of her mother’s ancestry is German and Scots-Irish.
Curtis has an older sister, Kelly Curtis, who is also an actress, and several half-siblings (all from her father’s other marriages): Alexandra Curtis, Allegra Curtis, Benjamin, and Nicholas Curtis (who died in 1994 of a drug overdose, at age 23).
According to The List, Curtis revealed: “By the time I came along … my parents’ bond had deteriorated precipitously as their stardom grew.” And by the time Curtis was four, her parents had divorced.
After the divorce, according to E! Online, her father wasn’t around and he was not interested in being a father. The revelation came after Curtis was written out of her father’s will, as she added: “I look at him much more from the perspective of being like all of you: a fan of him.”
Transformed by Motherhood
According to Closer, Curtis and her husband decided to adopt their two kids, Annie and Thomas Guest, due to fertility issues which meant that it was impossible for the couple to conceive naturally.
In the US, infertility is a common yet unfortunate issue to be burdened with, and sometimes infertility is irreversible and cannot be treated with medication or alternative treatments. About 12 or 13 people in every 100 will have trouble with becoming pregnant with around 6.1 million women having difficulty becoming and remaining pregnant (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
In Curtis’ case, it is unknown who out of her and her husband is infertile, but it hasn’t prevented them from being great parents to their adoptive children.
Adoption is a complicated decision to make under any circumstance as there are so many things to consider. Dishing the details about their process in an interview with Gail Steinberg from PACT, Curtis stated:
“[We] adopted Annie in 1986 in an open adoption. It probably was different for us than for most others. There’s something that happens to other people when you become very very famous. It’s a look in their eyes — they’re afraid to look straight at you; they treat you like royalty; they’re very self-conscious. But when we met Annie’s birth mother and she said, “Hi, I’m happy to meet you,” it was like, boom, it was OK. I knew we could adopt.”
Later on in the interview, she admitted that in Tom’s (her adopted son) case, she wasn’t looking for more children and that Tom came to her, but she knew it was the right choice after witnessing his birth and cutting the cord, describing that it “changed” her life.
Discussing how motherhood has transformed her life in the best ways, Curtis said: “Motherhood has changed everything in my life… When I began acting, I did not assume I would ever have a child. I made choices based on my life then… Now I make every decision with my children in mind. I choose my roles carefully.”