Jamie Lee Curtis Says Kelly Curtis Dies at 69
jamie lee curtis said her sister Kelly Curtis died Saturday morning at 69, calling her “my first friend and lifelong confidant.” Curtis added that she died “in her home, in nature, and at peace,” turning a family loss into the latest news from one of Hollywood’s most durable lineages.
Kelly Curtis was an actress with film, television, stage, and documentary credits, and she also came from a family already embedded in screen history. Her death brings fresh attention to a career that ranged from a 1958 screen debut to a recurring TV role in the 1996-99 run of The Sentinel.
Jamie Lee Curtis Post
Jamie Lee Curtis said her sister was “jaw droppingly beautiful, and a talented actress.” She also wrote that Kelly “played a mean game of hearts, collected turtles, loved her family, nature, music, thrifting, travel, Facebook, and Pokémon Go,” then added that she “was proud of her Danish roots and Hungarian Jewish ancestry and was a devoted American patriot.”
The social post is doing the work a formal family statement often does not: it gives the public a portrait, not just a notice. That matters in a death like this, where the headline is the age and the family name, but the record is a working career that crossed multiple formats and decades.
From Skidmore To The Sentinel
Kelly Curtis was born in Santa Monica on June 17, 1956, made her first screen appearance in The Vikings in 1958, and graduated from Skidmore College in 1972 with a degree in business. She worked as a stockbroker before studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, then appeared onstage in Say Goodnight, Gracie in 1982.
She later appeared with Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places in 1983, starred in Magic Sticks in 1987 and The Devil’s Daughter in 1991, and held a recurring role as Lieutenant Carolyn Plummer on The Sentinel. Her credits also included episodes of The Equalizer, Hunter, Silk Stalkings, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Judging Amy.
Tony Curtis Family Legacy
Kelly Curtis was the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, who married in 1951 and divorced in 1962. Janet Leigh died in 2004 at 77, Tony Curtis died in 2010 at 85, and Robert Brandt died in 2009 at 82, leaving Jamie Lee Curtis as the most visible public face of a family that still carries unmistakable Hollywood weight.
She also worked behind the camera, serving as an assistant to Jamie Lee Curtis on Freaky Friday in 2003, Christmas With the Kranks in 2004, and You Again in 2010, and later directed the 2018 documentary Marby Jets Are Go. For readers following the family, the immediate takeaway is simple: Kelly Curtis’s death closes a long, varied career, while Jamie Lee Curtis has already set the public record on how she wants her sister remembered.
