Trivia of Janet Leigh

Trivia of Janet Leigh

*In winter 1945, Leigh’s parents were working at a ski lodge in the Sierra Nevada mountains when retired superstar Norma Shearer came in on vacation. While perusing the ski lodge lobby, Shearer spotted a photo of their 18-year-old daughter Janet in a photo album.Shearer was immediately taken with the photo and decided she was going to make this girl a star. As she said, "That smile made it the most fascinating face I had seen in years. I felt I had to show that face to somebody at the studio.”

*Eloped at the age of 15 - marriage was later annulled. Thus, Tony Curtis was her third husband when she married him at age 23.

She co-starred with Tony Curtis in five films: Houdini (1953), The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), The Vikings (1958), The Perfect Furlough (1958) and Who Was That Lady? (1960).In 1962, her marriage to Curtis ended in divorce when he sent her the divorce papers on the set movie The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

*Leigh was one smart cookie. She attended grammar school and high school in Stockton, California, skipping several grades and graduating at age 15.

*Originally, she was considered for the role of Lila Crane in Psycho (1960) and Vera Miles was intended for the role of Marion Crane. After a few screen tests, the actresses roles were reversed when they, and Hitchcock, agreed that it would be better for both them and the characters centered within the screenplay.Her iconic performance in Psycho made her so traumatized by notorious shower murder, that she actually avoided taking showers for the rest of her life.

*Felt insulted when Stanley Kubrick asked her to play Charlotte Haze in Lolita (1962), as it was the kind of part reserved for a character actress, not a sexy star coming off a box office smash. Needless to say, she turned it down and the role went to Shelley Winters.

*She and her actress daughter Jamie Lee Curtis appear together in John Carpenter's The Fog (1980), though they do not meet until the film's ending. They also appear together in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) early in the film when Janet reports to Jamie on a problem with the girls' shower at a private school.

*Leigh was also a published author and wrote four books between 1984 and 2002.Leigh’s first book was an autobiography titled “There Really Was a Hollywood“. She then went on to share her stories from the set of the classic movie, Psycho, with “Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller” which she co-wrote with Christopher Nickens. Leigh then went on to write two novels; “House of Destiny” in 1996 and her final book, “The Dream Factory” in 2002.