Jamie Lee Curtis says goodbye to 'Halloween Ends' and hello to Oscar buzz: 'Let's go get it'

“Halloween Ends” pits Jamie Lee Curtis’ famous “final girl” Laurie Strode vs. Michael Myers one last time, and on the first day of shooting her closing film in the horror franchise, Curtis couldn’t figure out why her face and jaw hurt.

For once, it wasn’t because of an attack by a certain masked maniac.

“I thought, ‘Do I have TMJ? What's happening?’ I looked in the mirror and went, ‘Ohhh.’ Laurie was genuinely smiling, and all of a sudden I realized how long it had been since Laurie smiled,” Curtis recalls after a scene where her iconic survivor has a flirtatious run-in with an old friend (Will Patton). “For me to explore that she has a beating heart or some longing for contact with someone was so shocking.”

Set four years after “Halloween Kills,” in which Laurie spent most of the film in a hospital room and away from the action, “Ends” (in theaters and streaming on Peacock Friday) lets Curtis dig into different sides of Laurie – not just as a romantic interest but also a protective parent, goofball grandma and champion of misfits bullied by marching band kids.

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Laurie is even writing a book about her life story, which includes Michael’s murderous intentions first in 1978 (see: John Carpenter’s original “Halloween”) and then 40 years later in the fictional Illinois town of Haddonfield.

Don’t hold your breath for Curtis to follow suit with her own memoir, though. “I live and breathe my truth. I'm like an open book as a person,” she says. “And yet the one thing I don't think I will do is open a book. The whole idea is that I need some privacy. And my intimate life and my intimate connections with people, I think I need to keep private.”

As “Ends” begins, Curtis’ horror icon is in a relatively peaceful place when she meets Corey (Rohan Campbell) and sees a fellow pariah. Corey was traumatized by a violent incident three years prior that left one boy dead and him an outcast, while Laurie was once hailed as a heroine but is now blamed by Haddonfield residents for Michael’s bloody reappearance.

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For Curtis, art imitates life: “We’ve allowed hatred and bile to spew out of us to victims through these modes of transport – which we call the Internet, which we call Twitter, which is supposed to be free speech but it's really free hate,” the 63-year-old actress says.

The current “Halloween” trilogy is composed of “Trojan horses of ideas" which are “thrown into the middle of slasher movies,” she adds. Throughout it all, she’s been a key collaborator in fleshing out Laurie’s “soulfulness,” says director/co-writer David Gordon Green.

He calls the new film a “really bittersweet chapter” that says goodbye but also is “putting to bed something that's been a legacy of hers and an opportunity of mine.”

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Concluding her “Halloween” story is “really weird” and “definitely emotional and heart-pounding,” Curtis says.

“I guarantee you there will be one day when all of this dies down, all of this Laurie love (and) I will be sitting with my little dog, who will be very happy to have me home, and I will sob and sob and sob," she says, choking up. "I'm too close to it. It's too personal and it's why it's so good, but it's also why it hurts so much.”

While “Ends” is, yes, an ending, Curtis is enjoying a new beginning in Hollywood. The success of the “Halloween” movies has “made me a player,” she says. “I now have the opportunity to have a creative life that I've dreamt about my whole life and never had the foothold for it.” She wrote and will direct an eco-horror movie called “Mother Nature” that’s “been in my head since I was 19” and also started a production company within Jason Blum’s Blumhouse that allows her to buy books and take them to the screen. (First up: a TV show based on author Patricia Cornwell's crime thrillers featuring forensic psychologist Kay Scarpetta.)

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Curtis is also garnering Oscar buzz – for wearing hot dog hands, no less – as part of word-of-mouth phenomenon “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The mind-melting sci-fi adventure is a best picture contender, Michelle Yeoh is one of a stacked field of best actress competitors, and Curtis is in the mix for supporting actress (and her first Academy Award nomination).

Someone sent her a faux Oscar ad with a picture of her character, IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdra, “looking insane and it just says, ‘Consider this,’ ” Curtis recalls. “I literally snort-laughed because I thought, ‘Well, there it is.' ”

To be in that conversation is “beautiful and couldn’t be more special,” she says. Curtis is tossing aside any and all “Wouldn’t it be nice?” posturing, too. “I’m a cheerleader. I am a weapon of mass promotion. ... I am all in. Let's go get it. Let's get Michelle gold right now. I will do everything in my power to support that.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Halloween Ends': Jamie Lee Curtis says farewell to Laurie Strode