Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest’s relationship, in her own words
Jamie Lee Curtis and her husband, actor-director Christopher Guest, have been married for 40 years — much to the surprise of Curtis herself.
“I am the most immature guest you’ve ever had,” she told Hoda Kotb Dec. 12 on TODAY. “How is it possible that I am married 40 years? I don’t understand it.”
Guest is the screenwriter and director of such movies as “Best in Show” and “Waiting for Guffman” and has appeared in films like “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Princess Bride.”
Curtis reflected on how she and Guest have grown together over the decades.
“Ultimately, Chris wasn’t a director when I married him. I wasn’t a writer. Chris wasn’t a producer when I married him. I wasn’t a producer when he married me. We have grown into these new jobs that we’ve done,” she told Hoda.
Through it all, Curtis explained her husband still makes her laugh “more than any human being.”
“I’m sure there’s something about me that he likes. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure there’s something,” she added.
Curtis married the actor in 1984, about five months after she first saw his picture.
“I met my husband by seeing his picture in a magazine and saying out loud to a friend of mine, ‘I’m going to marry that dude,’ and married him … months later,” Curtis told Hoda during an appearance on TODAY in 2021. “So the truth of the matter is life hinged for me on a couple seconds that I didn’t see coming.”
In 2015, Curtis spoke about her marriage on TODAY, including tips she has on how to help your marriage last. “Don’t get divorced,” she said. “It’s a fascinating thing. I could write a book on marriage called ‘Don’t Leave.’”
Aside from their roles in Hollywood, Curtis and Guest are also parents. They have raised two children together: Annie Guest and Ruby Guest, who came out as transgender in July 2020.
Interested to know more about Curtis and Guest’s relationship history? Keep reading to learn more.
Curtis knew she would marry Guest after seeing his picture in Rolling Stone
Curtis has frequently recalled their meet-cute, which technically began when she saw a photo of Guest and his “Spinal Tap” co-stars in Rolling Stone magazine in 1984.
“I married Chris five months after seeing his picture in Rolling Stone,” Curtis said in Interview Magazine. “I said out loud to my friend, the late, great Debra Hill, ‘Oh, I’m going to marry that guy.'”
“Debra said, ‘Oh, I know him, and he’s with your agency. I tried to get him in a movie.’ So I called the agent, left my number, but Chris never called me. And then I ran into him at a restaurant.”
Curtis went into more detail about their restaurant run-in with Interview.
“He was sitting about 10 feet away and he looked at me and kind of nodded. I made a gesture, like, ‘Hi, I’m the one who called you. I was sitting with Melanie Griffith and Steven Bauer, and I looked down at my plate and whispered, ‘Oh my God, I called this guy and he never called me back and there he is.’ At that moment, Chris got up to leave. He shrugged his shoulders, and basically waved goodbye. Not a word was exchanged,” she said.
But he did call the next day, and from there the relationship was swift. “He had kept my number. That was June 28, 1984, and I married him four months later, on December 18,” she said.
On Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally’s podcast, Guest said he knew, on his first date with Curtis, that she was “the one.”
“It was a moment of just knowing. This feeling of, ‘This is the real thing,’ and knowing that,” he said.
The couple share 2 children, Annie and Ruby
The couple adopted their first child, Annie Guest, after she was born on Dec. 13, 1986. Annie Guest is now a dance instructor, per an interview Curtis did with AARP in 2021.
Ten years later, in March 1996, Curtis and Guest adopted their next child, Ruby. In 2021, they shared that Ruby, a computer gaming editor, came out as transgender.
Speaking to AARP, Curtis revealed that she and Guest “have watched in wonder and pride as our son became our daughter Ruby. And she and her fiancé will get married next year at a wedding that I will officiate.”
Ruby Guest married her partner, Kynthia, in May 2022 in an outdoor World of Warcraft-themed ceremony in her parents’ backyard, where Annie Guest also had her wedding.
Her marriage advice? ‘Marry your opposite’
Curtis shared more about her relationship with Guest in a Good Housekeeping profile from 2018. Her biggest piece of advice: marry your opposite.
“My husband and I are opposites. We have been for 33 years, and we always will be,” Curtis said. “He’s an intellectual, and I was from the movie star/alcoholic/drug addict side, where education was not the most important thing. We don’t listen to the same radio station, we don’t read the same paper, we don’t go to bed at the same time.”
However, they do find common ground in their literary taste.
“But we read the same history books. For our 30th anniversary we both read a book called ‘Undaunted Courage,’ the story of Lewis and Clark. Then we took eight friends and retraced a section of the Missouri River in canoes that followed the path of their expedition. We’re a little nerdy.”
Curtis wrote a song for him for their anniversary
Curtis wrote her husband an original song for their 35th wedding anniversary. In an interview with AARP in July 2021, she shared some of the lyrics: “I feel safe when I drive up and see that you are home.”
Curtis explained, “That’s the long marriage. It’s the safety of knowing his car is in the garage, that I’m not alone, and that he’s here.”
They celebrated Curtis’ 1st Academy Award nomination together
After being nominated in 2023 for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in the film “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” Curtis posted a photo of her hugging her husband on Instagram.
“THIS IS WHAT SURPRISE LOOKS LIKE!” she wrote about the news of her first Oscar nomination, adding “the best thing of all”: “a loving embrace for my husband.”
“No filters. No fakery. Just the truth of a moment of joy Captured by a friend,” she wrote.
Curtis later won the Academy Award and thanked her “beautiful husband” in her speech.
