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Janet Leigh
Birthday:
6 July 1927
Birth Name:
Jeanette Helen Morrison
Height:
166 cm
Biography
[in 1953, on getting second billing to Tony Curtis in Houdini (1953)] I don't care if he's made one picture and I've made a hundred. I will always take second billing to my husband.
[in 1953, on getting second billing to Tony Curtis in Houdini (1953)] I don't care if he's made one picture and I've made a hundred. I will always take second billing to my husband.
[on Night of the Lepus (1972)] I've forgotten as much as I could about that picture.
[on Night of the Lepus (1972)] I've forgotten as much as I could about that picture.
[on her Psycho (1960) co-star, the late Anthony Perkins] To me he was a leading man. But to the rest of the world, he'll always be "Norman Bates". People just wouldn't let him be anything else.
[on her Psycho (1960) co-star, the late Anthony Perkins] To me he was a leading man. But to the rest of the world, he'll always be "Norman Bates". People just wouldn't let him be anything else.
[on working with Alfred Hitchcock] Hitch relished scaring me. When we were making Psycho (1960), he experimented with the mother's corpse, using me as his gauge. I would return from lunch, open the door to the dressing room and propped up in my chair would be this hideous monstrosity. The horror in my scream, registered on his Richter scale, decided which du...
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[on working with Alfred Hitchcock] Hitch relished scaring me. When we were making Psycho (1960), he experimented with the mother's corpse, using me as his gauge. I would return from lunch, open the door to the dressing room and propped up in my chair would be this hideous monstrosity. The horror in my scream, registered on his Richter scale, decided which dummy he'd use as the Madame.
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I don't know what it is I exude. But whatever it is, it's whatever I am!
I don't know what it is I exude. But whatever it is, it's whatever I am!
Psycho (1960) gave me very wrinkled skin. I was in that shower for seven days - 70 setups. At least, he [Alfred Hitchcock] made sure the water was warm.
Psycho (1960) gave me very wrinkled skin. I was in that shower for seven days - 70 setups. At least, he [Alfred Hitchcock] made sure the water was warm.
[when asked if it was true that she doesn't take showers] It's actually, honestly true. And not because of the shooting of it. It was the seeing of it. It never dawned on me how truly vulnerable we are. But that's what [Alfred Hitchcock] did. A shower. A bird. All these things that are absolutely ordinary, he made extraordinary.
[when asked if it was true that she doesn't take showers] It's actually, honestly true. And not because of the shooting of it. It was the seeing of it. It never dawned on me how truly vulnerable we are. But that's what [Alfred Hitchcock] did. A shower. A bird. All these things that are absolutely ordinary, he made extraordinary.
Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. This led to a screen test at MGM and a starring role in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). MGM was looking for a young naive country girl and Janet filled the bill perfectly. She would play the young ingénue in a number of films and work with such stars as Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Orson Welles and Judy Garland. She appeared in a number of successful films, including Little Women (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Houdini (1953) and The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), among others. Janet would appear in a variety of films, from comedies to westerns to musicals to dramas. Of her more than 50 movies, she would be remembered for the 45 minutes that she was on the screen in the small-budget thriller Psycho (1960). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this 1960 classic would include the shower scene that would become a film landmark. Even though her character is killed off early in the picture, she would be nominated for an Academy Award and receive a Golden Globe. Her next film would be The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which she starred with Frank Sinatra. For the rest of the decade, her appearances in films would be rare, but she worked with Paul Newman in Harper (1966). In the 1970s she appeared on the small screen in a number of made-for-TV movies. In 1980, she appeared alongside her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog (1980), and later, in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Janet Leigh died at age 77 in her home in Beverly Hills, California on October 3, 2004.
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