Trying not to freak out

On a winter morning in the thick of Hollywood’s awards season, Golden Globe nominee Jamie Lee Curtis is standing in her office, preparing to zip off to a couple of appointments in her black Mercedes. She’s looking sleekly successful in diamond earrings and a Jill Sander suit, which, she insists, “is not black, it’s espresso, darling,” but she’s talking about her missing jaw.

“I had been saying to my friend,” she says, “ ‘What happened to my jaw?’ “-- she frantically gropes her neck -- “ ‘It just left one day.’ ” Her friend, jewelry designer Cathy Waterman -- “I’m wearing her jewelry Sunday night,” Curtis adds in a write-that-down voice -- mentioned a book called “Miss Crane’s Facial Exercise.” Curtis hunted down the 1970 out-of-print manual and now she thumbs through pages that demonstrate bizarre contortions intended to tone the muscles of the head and neck. This, she says, is her workout plan for the Golden Globes: “I’m going to do the buccinator, the caninus,” she says, bugging her eyes and grimacing. “Here’s the mentalis.” She frowns and juts her chin.

How could we have forgotten how funny Jamie Lee Curtis is? In 2003 she came roaring back from career obscurity to star in one of the most profitable hits of the year, Disney’s “Freaky Friday,” the body-switch comedy in which she plays an uptight psychotherapist mom who channels her 15-year-old rocker daughter. Her performance earned critical raves, propelled the movie to a $110-million gross and nabbed Curtis her fifth Golden Globe nomination. (She has won twice, for “True Lies” and the television series “Anything but Love.”)

At 45, Curtis is both delighted and bemused to find herself strapped in once again for Hollywood’s annual roller-coaster ride. This time she’s fortified by both the knowledge that none of it is important and a sense of humor sharp enough to slice the sequins off a ball gown. It’s called perspective, darling.

That perspective has been hard-won, as her first stop today makes clear. Like all well-behaved nominees, Curtis has been smiling her way through various events to publicize the film. But her first commitment this morning is not dictated by publicists. Curtis is due at Santa Monica Drug Court to speak at an awards ceremony for addicts who have graduated from a rehabilitation program.

In February, she will have five years of freedom from alcohol and Vicodin. She is active in the 12-step recovery movement and sits on the board of CASA, the think tank based at Columbia University that researches all aspects of drug abuse. “This drug court is a great program,” she says, “and I think it’s helpful for them to hear someone who is also recovering who acknowledges how much we share.”

In the chambers of Judge Bernard Kamins, Curtis puts everyone at ease with jokes about the Quaaludes she took in the ‘70s and her compulsiveness, which causes her to keep $500 worth of quarters in her car for parking meters.

“I’m powerless over being a control freak,” she says, as she alphabetizes the diplomas of the 11 graduates.

Judge Kamins asks how she would like him to introduce her. “You can say I’m a movie actress for 25 years,” she says, “I write books for children, I’ve been married almost 20 years and I’m raising children.”

Once she takes the podium she delivers an ardent endorsement of sober living.

“The difference between the 11 of you and me is that you got caught,” she begins, looking squarely at the rapt honorees, who represent an assortment of ages and colors. “I’m a drug addict. I had everything anybody in the world could ever want: I had two children and a husband. And I hated myself; I hated my life.”

She talks about transformation and the willingness to change, lightening up the heavy stuff with imitations of her Brazilian masseuse, who busted her for her Vicodin habit. “I always wanted to be spiritual,” she says. “My father [film star Tony Curtis] is a Jew; my mother [film star Janet Leigh] reads the Daily Word. I am somewhere between, and I could never figure it out.”

She says that she lives her life now according to two questions she read in a book of Buddhist wisdom: Did I live wisely? Did I love well? “I wish you a most interesting, wise, challenging course for the rest of your life,” she says to the graduates.

“Perspective-arranging, isn’t it?” says Curtis, back in her car and steering it toward a drastically different corner of her universe: the Beverly Hills atelier of designer Richard Tyler, who is designing her dress for the Golden Globes. Zooming down the 10 Freeway, she analyzes the random progression of her career with a steady stream of incisive thoughts as if interviewing herself. She never planned any of her incarnations, not horror movie diva (the “Halloween” franchise fell into her lap), nor hot-bodied comedian (director John Landis called her out of the blue to be in “Trading Places”) nor successful author (she began by writing down funny things her kids said). Last year’s comeback was utterly unpremeditated; she had abandoned all aspirations to headline movies when she got the call that Annette Bening had dropped out of “Freaky Friday” five days before filming.

She’s still trying to wrap her brain around the fact that some folks in high places think her performance deserves an Oscar nomination. “I was the illegitimate bastard child of the movies, making horror movies,” she says. “It wasn’t my choice. I auditioned for other things; I didn’t get them. Had I been able to start my career off with ‘Witness,’ I would have. Been lit by John Seale and had Harrison Ford staring at me all day and Peter Weir telling me what to do, you know? But that wasn’t the road that I got to choose.”

She marvels that she’s still working when so many of her acclaimed peers have dropped out of sight (Kelly McGillis owns a restaurant in Key West). “I just kind of go, ‘OK, I don’t know why. I’ll just shut up.’ ”

“Freaky Friday” feels like a miracle that evolved from sobriety, she says. In 2002, she had written her fifth children’s book, “I’m Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem.” Since quitting drugs she had gained 15 pounds and stopped obsessing about her figure. When it came time to promote the book with a More Magazine cover story, she decided to deconstruct her sexy image by posing for a lumpy this-is-what-Jamie-really-looks- like shot in an exercise bra and shorts.

The photo spread got tons of media attention and she found herself speaking out on women’s body image issues. “I think when they were looking for someone who could be the mother of a teenager in ‘Freaky Friday,’ I was just there.”

She had not a minute to rehearse her part, much less fret about it -- but as the mother of a teenager, Annie, which happened to be almost the name of her screen daughter (Lindsay Lohan plays Anna), she was prepared. “It became a really free and open experience for me, a lesson in letting go and saying, ‘Now what?’ ” Audiences were infected with the hilarity that Curtis and her collaborators enjoyed while making “Freaky Friday,” and now it’s red carpet time. “I can tell you that it’s complicated,” she says. “You try to do it with dignity and a little bit of humor -- more than a little humor -- and certainly a good perspective on what the reality of it all is.”

Curtis says that the hardest thing is weathering the onslaught of speculation.

“I’ve been on both sides of it,” she says. “I was in [the television movie of] ‘The Heidi Chronicles,’ and I was the only person in our production not to be nominated for an Emmy. Everyone else: the movie, the director, the other actors were nominated. And I played Heidi!” She screams with laughter. “In ‘The Heidi Chronicles’!”

“The difficulty,” she says, “is other people telling you what they think is going to happen, many of whom have won all of the biggest accolades there are and who come up and look at you and go: ‘You’re going to get nominated for an Oscar.’ What are you supposed to say to that? You say, ‘Thank you; that’s kind of you.’ ”

Ultimately, her aim is “to try to look good in the dress and have fun.” She finds all those nervous people in the same room is oddly bonding. She’s been around the awards track so many times, she says, she even has special awards show friends.

“Ellen DeGeneres and I have an only-award-show friendship; it’s fabulous. We only see each other at these things, and we have a wonderful time getting to know each other.”

After parallel parking near Tyler’s studio, Curtis grabs a bag with her high-heeled sandals in it for trying on The Dress. She’s not into borrowing clothes (“A shoe designer called offering to lend me shoes. I’ll buy my own shoes, thank you”), or babbling about her frock to the likes of Joan Rivers; she’ll leave that to the dewy young set. “Richard makes beautiful clothes that are incredibly well-cut, and I look like an adult. I want to look like a fancy version of myself, not some trussed-up doll.” Inside, Curtis is warmly greeted by Tyler and his team and whisked back to the fitting room. “Jamie is a delight,” says Tyler. “Which, I’m sorry to say, is pretty rare. And she’s got a fabulous body.”

That she does: Curtis emerges, statuesque, in a cream-colored confection that showcases her hourglass figure. Standing in front of the mirror, Curtis pushes and prods her flesh like Play-Doh. She’s concerned that when she leans over she’ll spill out of her top. “She has such divine bosoms,” says Tyler. “Yeah,” she replies, “but they need somewhere to sit.” Tyler fusses with a chiffon sleeve; the dress was originally designed to be sleeveless, but Curtis doesn’t want to bare her arms. She makes the flab underneath her bicep wiggle. “See, this is after going to the freaking gym!” she cries. At 4:30, Curtis finally heads back to Santa Monica. “My personal relationships are the absolute center of my life,” she says. “And then the rest of all of this can swirl around, and I don’t have to worry about it.” She’s eager to hear about 8-year-old Tom’s day at school, find out how Annie’s SAT tutoring is going and greet her husband, mockumentary mastermind Christopher Guest (“Best in Show,” last year’s “The Mighty Wind”) after his golf game. She attributes the longevity of her marriage to “growth, hopefully. Parallel, mutual, intersecting growth.” That doesn’t mean we’re likely to see a professional collaboration between Lord and Lady Haden-Guest (yes, he’s titled). “He works in improvisational comedy,” she says. “I wouldn’t even for a second know how to do that.”

But give her a funny script and she’ll run with it -- as long as it shoots in L.A.: She’s no longer willing to leave her family to travel to location for more than a week at a time. In April she’ll costar with Tim Allen in “Skipping Christmas,” a comedy adaptation of a John Grisham novella, directed by Joe Roth. Curtis was Roth’s first choice for the role. “Jamie is unique as a movie star/comedienne,” he says. “She’s at an age where not many of the comediennes do physical comedy. She is a trouper.”

On Tuesday, Curtis phones in a bulletin: “We’ve completely rethunk the dress!” she says. “The arm thing got very difficult. You know, to take these fairylike dresses and add sleeves doesn’t really work.” Curtis sounds calm, but not having her ensemble nailed down challenges her inner control freak. “To be completely shifting gears this late is uncharted territory,” she says. “So I’m being very in the moment. It’s a good lesson.”

Jamie Lee Curtis, living wisely.