Jamie Lee Curtis’ win for her supporting role in Everything Everywhere All At Once helped kick off an early surge for the Oscar frontrunner, but for many, it was one of her other major roles that came to mind.
She received a standing ovation after Ariana DeBose and Troy Kotsur announced her name. And in a rousing speech, she repeated the sentiment, motioning to her EEAAO cast and crew, her family and team, genre lovers, and her parents (actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh) that “We just won an Oscar.”
Curtis’ decades-long career covers a wide range of roles and genres. But for people of a certain age, Curtis is just as memorable for her years-long tenure as an Activia spokesperson (to the point where there’s an entire SNL sketch about it).
Curtis has been open about the fact that working with Activia, which she calls the “yogurt that makes you shit,” allowed her to work while she raise her children with her husband, Christopher Guest.
“It’s the reason that I sold yogurt that makes you shit for seven years,” Curtis explained to KingCast, a Stephen King-focused podcast, in 2021 while promoting Halloween Kills. “Part of the reason why I’ve done commercials…I’ve been doing commercials for a very, very, very long time partially so I can ameliorate all of that distance from my family. It allowed me to earn money and stay home.”
But it was just as easy for some to blame Activia for Curtis’ win over fellow nominees Angela Bassett for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Hong Chau for The Whale, Stephanie Hsu for EEAAO, and Kerry Condon for The Banshees of Inisherin. While Curtis’ win signals support for the film outside of more guaranteed wins like Ke Huy Quan’s performance, she might not have been people’s first choice to win that award (or the person from EEAAO they’d pick in that category)—and Activia might just be something like a scapegoat through which to fuel their frustration.
We reached out to Activia’s parent company Danone for comment.
