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Jamie Lee Curtis recalls how the iconic str!ptease scene in James Cameron's "True Lies" (1994) was filmed & her experience watching this scene with her dad, Tony Curtis in the theater:
"The thing that nobody knows [about the scene]: There was no rehearsal, there is no choreographer. Jim [Cameron] said to me, 'What do you want to dance to?'
It was when John Hiatt's Bring the Family album was out and I said, 'There's a song called 'Alone in the Dark' that has this really funky rhythm, And I said, 'I really like that song.' And that's what they played.
I don't think Jim had seen me in my underwear. We were doing it over and over and over, and it got quieter and quieter.
At one point, Jim walked up and he whispered in my ear, 'If I get a pad, will you let go of the pole?' I said, 'Sure.' So they just wheeled in a little thin mat, on the ground, and we did it again, and I let go."
The scene of her character Helen falling during the steamy dance garnered her "the single biggest laugh [she] will ever get in [her] life."
"It's because Jim knew that the dance was too sexy; it was too real, It started to actually be good, and he knew he needed to break the spell of what the husband had put his wife through. I think we did two takes where I let go of the pole.
[My dad Tony Curtis] was sitting next to me, in Westwood, at the big Fox Theater there, Thousands of people β and you know, it gets really quiet during that sequence, because it's a little sexy.
Then when [Helen] falls and then gets back up, oh my God! The place, it was a huge β¦ because you're anxious. Then the laugh, and it's all Jim. To his great credit, it's all him. He knew, it's a comedy. It's a comedy."
[Jamie Lee Curtis Reveals How Her Iconic Striptease in 'True Lies' Came to Be: 'No Rehearsal', Jen Juneau, People, 2021]