All these years after exiting Psycho earlier than most folks expected (if that’s a spoiler to you, you might need to unplug your cable box for a couple of years and watch some movies that don’t feature the Mandylor troupe), Janet Leigh has succumbed to that dreaded thing known as mortality. The mom of Jamie Lee Curtis (thank you, Mrs. Leigh!) and her sister, the actress had managed to stay active in Hollywood long after her career had seen its better days through charity work and all that jazz.
She was also an early crush of mine. Something about the way she chose her roles or chose to play them seemed aggressive and proactive for the time. She was less afraid to take risks, whether it meant being a little more seductive or getting iced in a film people expected to watch her headline for two hours. Her career didn’t maintain its wattage into the 80’s and 90’s because Hollywood tends to ignore sex symbols once they stop being marketable as sex symbols (look what they did to Anne Ramsey) but she did managed to appear in the classic Night of the Lepus as well as alongside her daughter in Halloween: H20.
She was a class act. Sort of an eccentric and enigmatic presence and one that I couldn’t peg, but a class act regardless. Anyone who appears in Night of the Lepus (AKA: Rabbits HATE you) AND a Hitchcock classic deserves a little ink up on this putrid little website.