Jamie Lee Curtis was almost in ‘The Exorcist’ until her mother said no

Jamie Lee Curtis has revealed that she was once asked to audition for the 1970s horror classic The Exorcist, but that her mother, screen legend Janet Leigh, refused to allow it.

Speaking on The Drew Barrymore Show, Curtis said she was around 12 years old when producer Ray Stark, a friend of her mother, suggested she audition for the film adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel.

“He called my mum and said, ‘I’m producing the movie of the book The Exorcist. Will you let Jamie audition for it?’” Curtis recalled. She added that at the time she was “cute and kind of sassy” and likely stood out at a social gathering.

Despite the opportunity, Leigh declined. Curtis explained that the decision was rooted in her mother’s determination to protect her childhood rather than push her into acting too early.

“My mum really wanted me to have, thank God, a childhood,” Curtis said.

The role ultimately went to Linda Blair, whose performance became one of the most iconic in horror cinema history.

Although Curtis did not appear in The Exorcist, the film still left a lasting impression on her. She has previously said that her family screened the movie for her 15th birthday, an experience she found deeply unsettling.

“It scared me so badly that my friends would taunt me in school,” she told Entertainment Weekly in a past interview.

Ironically, Curtis would go on to become one of the most recognisable figures in horror cinema. She made her film debut in 1978’s Halloween, a role that established her as a defining “scream queen” of her generation.

Reflecting on that early success, Curtis later said the lack of pressure surrounding Halloween helped fuel its creative freedom.

“We had nothing to lose. We didn’t know that we had anything to gain,” she told Variety in 2020. “We were just so happy to have the gig.”

She added that the film was shot in just 17 days with a small crew, recalling a sense of magic on set that even director John Carpenter and writer Debra Hill may not have fully anticipated at the time.