Jamie Lee Curtis admits The Last Showgirl dance scene ‘breaks her heart’

Jamie Lee Curtis has admitted her dance scene in The Last Showgirl “broke her heart” when she saw it for the first time.

In Gia Coppola’s drama, the Halloween actress plays Pamela Anderson’s close friend Annette, a former showgirl who now works as a cocktail waitress in a Las Vegas casino.

In one memorable scene, Annette dances on a small stage on the casino floor to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart and nobody pays attention. The moment was not in the script and was improvised after Coppola and Curtis witnessed a real-life waitress perform.

Curtis did her dance in one take and didn’t give it much thought until she saw the memorable scene in the finished film.

“We did it once, I walked down the stairs, we moved on to the next scene. Never thought about it again. And then I saw the movie, and I saw how Gia utilised that as a storytelling device, and it broke my heart. Kills me every time,” she told Empire magazine.

Curtis underwent a significant transformation to look like Annette, who has a deep tan, dyed red hair and wears outdated make-up.

The Freaky Friday star explained that she knew exactly how Annette should look when she read the script.

“I wanted her to look like someone who’s been in the sun every day of her life for the last 40 years. I knew I wanted her to be a bottle redhead; I wanted it to look like it wasn’t a good dye job… I’m very specific, but I also show up fully loaded,” she said.

When the interviewer praised her for being so involved in the costume details, the Oscar winner replied, “I buy her purse, I buy her wallet, I buy her glasses. I work very closely with the prop department… It has to feel real. It has to feel like a purse that I carried for a long time, like a jacket I’ve worn for a long time.”

The Last Showgirl is in U.K. cinemas now.