Actors and actresses should generally stick to what they know best; repeating the lines others have written for them. Jamie Lee Curtis recently decided to try to explain, in her own words, how much she really supports the Second Amendment, but ended up showing how dependent she is on her screenwriters.
It started innocently enough, when FOXNews.com posted an article[1] about Curtis’s role in the latest installment of the Halloween horror movie franchise. The article simply pointed out that the character Curtis plays in the movie, Laurie Strode, uses firearms for personal protection (as do other characters in her body of work), then points out that Curtis is a vocal opponent of gun rights. But the article also suggested that she may not be “entirely anti-gun.”
Sensitive anti-gun folks on the Internet then leapt to the “defense” of the actress, claiming she’s just an actress playing a role[2]. Several tweets from these Internet White Knights seemed to indicate that there is nothing incongruous with Curtis being anti-gun AND acting in movies where guns are portrayed in what most would think is a favorable light.
Some even went so far as to point towards other movies and characters as part of their defense of her. Many of the examples, however, show despicable people committing horrific crimes. Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lecter character is mentioned, along with his cannibalism. Tony Curtis (Jamie Leigh’s actual father) playing the infamous Boston Strangler is offered. But for sheer magnitude, it’s hard to top the atrocity committed by the evil Thanos, portrayed by Josh Brolin in this year’s Avengers: Infinity War. He wipes out half of all life in the universe!
Sorry. Spoiler Alert!
But there’s a big problem with these examples.
