Why Pamela Anderson Reminds Jamie Lee Curtis of Her Mom Janet Leigh (Exclusive)

For Jamie Lee Curtis, Pamela Anderson reminds me of another blonde beauty: Curtis’ mother, actress Janet Leigh.

In the new issue of PEOPLE, Curtis and Anderson – who star in the new drama The last showgirl — discuss their new film and their friendship.

Although Curtis and Anderson had never met before making director Sofia Coppola’s film about two Las Vegas women at a crossroads in their lives, the former Halloween scream queen66 years old, knew Baywatch icon, 57.

“There was a photo of her in a swimsuit that I remember very well. How could you not? Curtis said about Anderson. “Pamela is classically beautiful, my mother was classically beautiful. I always thought I was cute at best and I felt that way when I was a kid. And so, in a way, Pamela reminds me of my mother.

“There was an innocence about my mother and an incredible beauty. I wrote an article about her once (titled) “Bye Bye, Beauty.” And I think the first line of that article was, ‘My mother was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life,'” Curtis continues of Leigh, the Psychology star died at age 77 in 2004.

“That’s what I learned from Pamela, this incredible beauty and this openness, really very moving for me,” Curtis continues.

Leigh was married to Curtis’ father, Some like it hot actor Tony Curtisfrom 1951 to 1962. The elder Curtis died in 2010 at the age of 85.

Due to the fame of her parents, the Everything everywhere at the same time The actress joked that she was the original “Nepo Baby.”

“I’ve been a professional actress since I was 19, which makes me an OG Nepo Baby,” she wrote on her Instagram stories in 2022. “I never understood, nor will I understand, what qualities got me hired that day, but since my first two lines on (the 1976-83 series Quincy ME.) as a contract actor at Universal Studios for this spectacular final creative year, some 44 years later, not a day goes by in my professional life that I am not reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars movie theater.

“The current conversation about nepo babies is simply designed to try to diminish, denigrate and hurt,” she continued. “For the record, I have traveled 44 years with the benefits that my associated and reflected fame has brought me, I do not pretend that there are not some, who try to tell me that I have no value by myself.”

The last showgirl is in select theaters now before expanding wider on January 10th.

For more from Jamie Lee Curtis and Pamela Anderson, check out the new issue of PEOPLE.