Eyebrow-Raising Red Flags In Jamie Lee Curtis' Marriage

OG scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis has been married to fellow actor Christopher Guest since 1984, with Curtis having impressively called her shot when she saw a photo of Guest in a magazine a few years earlier. "I looked at the man on the right, wearing a plaid shirt and a waggish smirk. I'd never seen him before, but I pointed at him. 'I'm going to marry that man,' I said to my friend," the actress recalled in a 2004 piece for O, The Oprah Magazine. Her initial attempt to get in touch with him fell on deaf ears, though Curtis eventually crossed paths with Guest in 1984, and the two tied the knot that same year. And given that their marriage has lasted more than 40 years and counting, it seems safe to say that they're doing something right. Even so, when you take a closer look inside Curtis and Guest's marriage, you do start to notice some eyebrow-raising red flags.

First and foremost, while marrying after only a short time together isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can allow the question of real compatibility to fall by the wayside (as "Property Brothers" star Jonathan Scott can attest to). But more than that, in a 2024 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Curtis cited "perseverance, patience, gentleness — and a really good dose of hatred" as being part of her and Guest's secret to keeping their marriage alive. And while her full comments do offer insight into where exactly she's coming from, phrasing it the way she did was certainly ... a choice. Not only that, but it shines a light on how she views mutual animosity in a relationship as being inevitable.

During her 2024 chat with Entertainment Tonight, Jamie Lee Curtis explained that her approach to dealing with bumps along the road with respect to her marriage was the same way she went about battling some of her own personal demons. "I'm sober for a long time, and we have a phrase in recovery: 'If you stay on the bus, the scenery will change.' And that's marriage," she said, adding, "It's like, all of a sudden you literally want to hate each other and then the next day it's a pretty sunny day ... and you look at each other like, 'Aww, gosh.' And then you're on another track."

That being said, Curtis seems acutely aware that basically saying "you have to hate your spouse sometimes" comes off as strange to some, noting that this philosophy had caught a previous interviewer who had asked about her and Christopher Guest's secret by surprise. Nevertheless, she doubled down on this sentiment. "You're going to hate each other. We're human beings," Curtis said. "Forty years, you're going to hate each other, and so not leaving, not allowing that hatred to cause you to make some choice that you're going to regret — I think that's really the secret," she continued.

Once again, though, as odd as this mindset may seem, something has clearly been working for the past four decades. And Curtis is nothing if not consistent in her perspective. As far back as 1991, she's spoken rather candidly about how her marriage to Guest is far from being perfect 100% of the time, but that she was in for the long haul regardless. "I don't think we have an easy marriage. We have a difficult, but successful marriage," she told People that year.