Quentin Tarantino Wanted an Oscar Campaign for Jamie Lee Curtis in ‘Halloween H20’… And He Was Right

To really know this writer is to know that I’m not a huge fan of modern Jamie Lee Curtis performances. I love her in Halloween, Terror Train, and James Cameron’s True Lies. But I was shocked she was even nominated for Everything Everywhere All at Once, let alone that she won the Oscar.

I also find her overwhelming in The Bear, especially that Christmas dinner episode.

But her performance in 1998’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later? Fucking amazing. It makes the movie. And Quentin Tarantino apparently felt strongly enough about it to try to get an Oscar campaign going.

“I tried to talk Bob Weinstein into pushing for an Oscar campaign for her in Halloween H2O,” Tarantino explained in a resurfaced interview. “I thought she was amazingly terrific in that movie.”

He’s right.

Released in 1998, H20 brought Curtis back as Laurie Strode in a story that followed Halloween and Halloween II, setting aside the intervening sequels. And just to clear up something people sometimes misremember: Laurie wasn’t established as Michael Myers’ sister in the original movie. That connection came in Halloween II.

Twenty years after the original, we finally got to spend time with the woman who survived him. Laurie had changed her name, become a mother, and built a life that still couldn’t keep the fear out.