Jamie Lee Curtis Is Unrecognizable in The Last Showgirl: Inside Her Shockingly Orange, Leathered Transformation

Jamie Lee Curtis' latest transformation may shock you.

The Last Showgirl, starring Pamela Anderson as veteran Las Vegas performer Shelley, features Curtis, 65, as her friend Annette, a former showgirl-turned-cocktail waitress. A first image from the Gia Coppola-directed indie reveals the Oscar winner in all her Sin City glory: a spray tan so intense it’s orange, with reddish hair and a bedazzled work uniform to match. 

Curtis “immediately had a lot of ideas about what she would look like and what her backstory was," she told Entertainment Weekly in a first-look feature published Nov. 8. "I called my wig maker and we were off to the races."

She added that she “wanted very much to show the damage the sun had done” to Annette, and arrived for the film’s table read with the red wig and a spray tan. 

“She has that leathered look,” explained Curtis. "There is that term that is kind of a pejorative of, particularly, women that says they look like they were rode hard and put away wet.”

At the table read, Anderson, 57, recalled to EW with a laugh that the “amazing” Curtis “was getting more and more orange, and with this frosty pink lipstick.”

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The Last Showgirl, from screenwriter Kate Gersten and producers Robert Schwartzman and Natalie Farrey, costars Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka and Billie Lourd. The buzzy movie marks Anderson's first leading role in years; her last screen credit was the 2022 horror film Alone at Night. 

The movie chronicles the Vegas showgirl scene which, as Curtis said, is made up of “people who have hustled their whole lives with very little support, very little education, very little family support, and have just grown [and] developed skills where there were none.”

The Halloween star added, "I know hustlers. I love hustlers.”

As Coppola, 37, explained to EW, Annette could also be considered a "bevertainer," or casino beverage server who also puts on their own act now and then. She and Curtis watched real-life bevertainers perform, prompting them to film her character dancing to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” 

"Everything I do is, 'F--- it, let's do it,’” said Curtis of that scene. “There's something so vulnerable about that idea that you're pouring yourself into something that nobody cares about. That's very sad and very much what Vegas, and mostly women in Vegas, have to deal with. Clearly, it was poignant for me."

Following its Toronto International Film Festival premiere in September, The Last Showgirl is in theaters Dec. 13.