Jamie Lee Curtis Says She Has 'Not Shied' Away from 'Nepo Babies' Label: 'Been Aware of That My Whole Life'

“But at the end of the day, none of that helps you when they say rolling and action,” the daughter of movie stars Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis tells PEOPLE

Jamie Lee Curtis knows that she has benefited from nepotism — but maintains that “none of that helps you” when the cameras start rolling.

On Saturday, Aug. 10, Curtis, 65, received an honorary degree from the American Film Institute and, while reflecting on what the honor means given her family tree — she is the daughter of movie stars Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis — the actress got real about the current conversation around nepotism in Hollywood.

“Nepo babies is an easy way for people to tell you [that] you don't deserve your success,” Curtis told PEOPLE at the commencement ceremony at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre in California.

“And I have been aware of that my whole life," she said. "I have not shied away from it. I am not under any delusion that hasn't had an effect and an impact."

Related: See Hollywood's 'Nepotism Babies' Side-by-Side with Their A-List Parents in Their Breakout Roles

That being said, the benefits of nepotism can only take one so far, the Oscar winner insisted. “But at the end of the day, none of that helps you when they say rolling and action,” she said. “It's at that moment that the art takes over.”

Curtis went on to explain that she now identifies with the label “artist” far more than she did when getting her start in the industry — and listed some of the artistic feats she has accomplished during her decades-long career.

Related: Emma Roberts Says Those Who Criticize Nepo Babies 'Don't See All the Rejection Along the Way'

“And I didn't know I was an artist originally, but I know I'm a creative person. I'm an ideas girl, and I've been an ideas girl from the beginning,” she told PEOPLE. “I'm a marketing whiz. … I've written books for children, I've written screenplays, I have directed. I am producing.”

“I am now an artist with a capital ‘A’ that I didn't know I was,” she continued. “And so my legacy is less acute now because my art has surpassed that. And yet I'm in a place of great historical significance and my daughter is here with me. The legacy is that I'm a mother and a friend and a collaborator.”

Her family’s legacy, “of course, has an impact,” she concluded — “but it is less acute.”

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Curtis first weighed in on the debate about nepotism in Hollywood in late 2022. After New York magazine’s “Nepo Baby” cover story hit stands, the actress declared herself an "OG Nepo Baby" on Instagram alongside a throwback photo of her famous parents.

"I have been a professional actress since I was 19 years old so that makes me an OG Nepo Baby," she wrote, referring to her breakout role in 1978’s Halloween.

"I've never understood, nor will I, what qualities got me hired that day, but since my first two lines on Quincy as a contract player at Universal Studios to this last spectacular creative year some 44 years later, there's not a day in my professional life that goes by without my being reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars."

Related: Dakota Johnson Found the Nepo Baby Controversy 'Incredibly Annoying and Boring': 'Write About Something Else'

"The current conversation about nepo babies," she continued in the post, "is just designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt. For the record I have navigated 44 years with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me, I don't pretend there aren't any, that try to tell me that I have no value on my own.”

Elsewhere in the post, Curtis called out people’s tendency to assume "nepotism babies" are not talented in their own right, writing that she has “come to learn that is simply not true.”

"There are many of us. Dedicated to our craft. Proud of our lineage," she wrote at the time. "Strong in our belief in our right to exist."

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