Jamie Lee Curtis Explains the Secret to Her Long Marriage to Christopher Guest: ‘A Really Good Dose of Hatred’

Jamie Lee Curtis is spilling the secret to her 40-year marriage with Christopher Guest.

“Well, you don’t leave,” Curtis, 65, told Entertainment Tonight on Sunday, September 8, adding, “I’m also sober for a long time. And we have a phrase in recovery: ‘If you stay on the bus, the scenery will change.’ And, you know, that’s marriage. You stay on the bus, the scenery changes. Like, all of a sudden, you literally wanna hate each other, and then the next day, it’s a pretty, sunny day. And the dog does something cute. And your child does something cute. And you look at each other, and you’re like, ‘Aw, gosh.’ And then you’re on another track.”

She named the qualities that contribute to marital success, saying, “Perseverance, patience, gentleness and a really good dose of hatred.”

The “truth,” she added, is that “you’re going to hate each other. Not leaving. Not allowing that hatred to then cause you to make some choice that you’re gonna regret. I think that’s really the secret.”

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Curtis married Guest, 76, in 1984, four months after they met. The couple went on to adopt daughters Annie and Ruby, who were born in 1986 and 1996, respectively.

“My husband and I are opposites. We have been for 33 years, and we always will be,” the Oscar nominee told Good Housekeeping in a 2018 profile. “He’s an intellectual, and I was from the movie star/alcoholic/drug addict side, where ­education was not the most important thing. We don’t listen to the same radio station, we don’t read the same paper, we don’t go to bed at the same time.”

She added at the time: “But we read the same history books. For our 30th anniversary, we both read a book called Undaunted Courage, [which is] the story of [explorers] Lewis and Clark. Then we took eight friends and retraced a section of the Missouri River in canoes that followed the path of their expedition. We’re a little nerdy.”

Professionally, Curtis has also been committed to her work as an actress through the highs and lows of sustaining a long-running career in Hollywood. Earlier this month she took home her first Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Donna Berzatto on The Bear during the 2024 Creative Arts Emmys.

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“It’s astonishing that I got this opportunity at this point in my life,” she said during her acceptance speech. While she was overcome with emotion on stage, Curtis cracked a joke backstage in the press room.

“I’ve been an actor since I was 19,” she told Us Weekly and other reporters. “I’m 65. I sold yogurt that makes you s–t for seven years. I just never thought in my life that I would get to do work at this level of depth and complexity. It’s just been the thrill of my creative life these last couple of years.”