"Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older"
About this Quote
The second clause is the gut-punch, because it refuses the usual euphemisms. “Incredibly cruel” is blunt, almost anti-PR, and “as you get older” names the industry’s favorite quiet violence: the way desirability is measured, gendered, and monetized. Curtis is talking about the economic logic behind the insults - fewer roles, narrower “types,” a camera culture trained to punish visible time. There’s subtextual defiance in her choice of words: she’s not asking for sympathy; she’s pointing to a system that manufactures insecurity and calls it standards.
Context matters: Curtis has built a career that both benefited from and interrogated Hollywood’s machinery, from horror icon to award-season elder stateswoman, increasingly vocal about aging and self-image. The quote reads like a warning and a boundary at once: she knows the rules because she grew up on the lot, and that knowledge turns her candor into a kind of leverage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Aging |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Curtis, Jamie Lee. (2026, January 17). Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/hollywood-is-the-backdrop-of-my-family-and-i-know-75964/
Chicago Style
Curtis, Jamie Lee. "Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/hollywood-is-the-backdrop-of-my-family-and-i-know-75964/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/hollywood-is-the-backdrop-of-my-family-and-i-know-75964/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.



