A Star Shines Bright

Jamie Lee Curtis finds a focus for her fame

Written by Natali Del Conte

It shouldn't matter how famous you are to do charity work. But it does. Most charities prefer A-list names on their advocacy lists, which is why the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation scored so big with Jamie Lee Curtis.

Curtis is the national spokesperson for Starlight, an organization that works to improve the quality of life for children with serious medical conditions by providing entertainment, education, and family activities. While Curtis is happy to lend her celebrity to the cause, she realizes that she may not always be the A-lister for the job. She knows that the media may someday prefer someone younger or hotter for photo ops and high profile galas and she is a-okay with that.

"That is so me thing I've told all the charities I work with," Curtis said in a phone interview just before Halloween."I said, ‘Look, I want you to keep looking for new people every year because I know how this business works and there are always going to be good, new exciting people coming up.' My ego is not involved here. I am me rely being of service."

Curtis works harder at promoting children's health-related issues than she does at maintaining her own fame. In recent years, she has significantly cut back on acting in order to devote herself to raising her family and working with nonprofit organizations such as the Starlight and the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation (CAAF).

She recently finished a movie with Disney and has said she is "open for business" for other parts. But she will not accept any role that requires her to travel or be away from her family for an extended amount of time."There are a lot of times that they ask me to go to the East Coast and I'm not able to," she said."I've got an 11-year-old boy in school and I'm not going to travel."

Her 11-year-old son Tom is the reason she got involved with Starlight in the first place. When Tom was 5 years old, he fell and ruptured his spleen. Curtis rushed him to the hospital and spent a particularly scary night next to his hospital bed praying for a safe recovery. In between doctors' visits and nurse check-ups, representatives from Starlight made their own rounds and brought Tom a Nintendo Ga meboy to take his mind off of the pain.

"When my son was injured, besides the skill of the doctors and the nurses, the single most important element of his recovery was that he was allowed to play Gameboy and Nintendo games while in the hospital," Curtis recalls. "It completely distracted him from the reason that he was there." Once Tom was recovered, Curtis reached out to Starlight to volunteer her time. Her involvement with the organization snowballed and she eventually took on the national spokesperson role that she holds today.

Curtis is certainly busy but she admits that she is not really balancing budgets or curing disease. She is simply happy to lend her brand."I'm the mouthpiece," she says in a tone of humility and frankness."They obviously use my name a lot as an ambassador for Starlight and what they do. I host parties and the big events and really just serve as a figurehead. I am the go-to person for any sort of publicity or public awareness."

This is oversimplifying a bit. She is no figurehead. She is well informed and serious when she talks about the challenges that Starlight and CAAF face. She knows that charitable donations are usually the first thing to go when money is tight in a struggling economy.

"Starlight and CAAF face the same challenge that faces every single nonprofit foundation today, yesterday, and tomorrow and that is money," she said."For the programs that they run and the initiatives they create on behalf of children, the constant need is fundraising. They cannot do all of the good work that is being done without money. As the financial markets become difficult, money gets harder and harder to raise. After 9/11, every charitable arm has experienced the ripple effect of the fact that there is so much need elsewhere."

Although Curtis is more comfortable than most when it comes to finances, she laments that she cannot give all that she would like to. We asked her if she sometimes gets weary running from luncheon to press conference and would rather cut a big check and stay home with her family instead.

"I would rather write a really big check but I'm not in the position to do so," she said."We have a lot of charities we give to but we also have two kids in school and charity begins at home. So yes, I would much prefer to write a very large check but that is what service work is. So every time you start feeling that you'd rather stay home, that's just a very selfish mindset. And I've never gone to something and wish I hadn't gone." The fundraisers may sound glamorous but Curtis does not seem to lose sight of the fact that she is working for causes that cause suffering. All too often she hears another story of another sick child that is tear jerking. She admits that it is hard to move on with life after hearing about someone else's unfair lot in life, but she has a very realistic attitude about it.

"We all have to live with some level of acceptance," she said."Between that acceptance and little bit of denial, it lets me sleep at night. Because if you just say the word ‘Darfur,' how do any of us sleep at night?"

Curtis spends most of her advocacy time on issues related to children, although as a recovering drug addict, she also does some work to promote drug-related issues. For the most part, however, children are her main focus. Curtis has been a bestselling children's author since her first book,"When I Was Little: A Four-Year Old's Memoir Of Her Youth," was published in 1993. Since then she has published seven other books, most of which were born out of her experience raising her two children, Sam and Anne.

"Writing books was truly an art form for me," she said."The idea that you make money on it never entered my mind. It is a passion for me. It comes out of a passion that now I make a lot of money doing but I never in a million years thought I would write anything that would make me money."

When we caught up with Curtis, she was preparing for this year's Children Affected By Aids Foundation's 14th Annual Dream Halloween in Los Angeles. In ticking off the costumes she has worn over the years, she alluded to the fact that she prefers these light-hearted events to the red carpet hooplah that force her into form-fitting gowns."It means that instead of wearing a gown that I have to suck my stomach into, I get to wear these great costumes," she said.

Pictures of Curtis in her elaborate Halloween costumes almost always make the grade for the star pages of People or US Magazine. It is not unusual to see her dressed as a pirate or a witch, raising money for very good causes. It all proves that as much as she jokes about dropping like a rock from the ranks of the A-list, in reality Curtis still has more than enough star power to make a difference. And that may turn out to be her greatest power of all.