Jamie Lee Curtis reveals her “secret sauce” to getting more screen time

Four decades into her acting career, Jamie Lee Curtis is now sharing her “secret sauce” that helps her get more on-screen time in the films she works on. Now that she’s secured her first Oscar nomination, she can reveal that one of her many keys to success in Hollywood is never leaving the set during shooting.

“Here’s the deal,” Curtis tells Insider at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. “It’s my secret sauce. Don’t go back to your trailers. Trailers are not your friend. Jonathan Wang, our producer of Everything Everywhere All At Once, will tell you I never left the set. I don’t believe in it.”

In addition to her recent role as the IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre on EEAAO, Curtis recently garnered attention for her leading performance in Knives Out as the matriarch of the Drysdale/Thrombey family, Linda. Curtis says she ended up in more scenes than originally intended simply because director Rian Johnson always saw her hanging out on set.

“He once called me his MVP on Knives Out, and when he was asked why, he said, ‘Because she was always on set,’” Curtis says, “’She never left the set.’ He ended up using me in shots he wasn’t going to use me in because I was on set.”

At the time of the film’s release, Johnson did in fact call Curtis the MVP of the set, telling Entertainment Tonight, “First of all, she would be early [every morning]. She’d beat all of us to set. Sometimes she would show up on set when she wasn’t even supposed to be in the scene and just be hanging out, and I would get really confused and kind of nervous. So I would put her in the scene! I was like, ‘Jamie Lee Curtis is here! Film her!’ She got into scenes she wasn’t even supposed to be in—just because she was there!”

On the horizon, Curtis has four upcoming projects, including the screen adaptation of the video game, Borderlands, as well as Spychosis, Kay Scarpetta, and Disney’s Haunted Mansion. If she sticks to her tried but true method, we could see more of her in these upcoming roles than originally planned.