ever comfortable
in her own skin—winces when remembering high
school. At 52, the actress and author of eight children’s
books recalls walking into a residential hall at the la-di-da Choate boarding school in Connecticut on the
first day of her senior year. She was a Hollywood wild
child (her parents were movie stars Janet Leigh and
Tony Curtis) wearing “bell-bottom jeans, a little French
T-shirt, and sunglasses, with my hair frosted.” She
was greeted, she says, by the “quintessential blond
preppy girl” in straight-legged corduroys and a crewneck sweater, defiantly dragging on a Marlboro.
“‘You Tony Curtis’s daughter?’”
mimics Curtis, pretend-puffing a cigarette. “ ‘We heard you were coming.’ ”
“It wasn’t pretty,” says Curtis. “I
ended up with just two friends, one
of them an exchange student. It was
them and me, this Hollywood weirdo.
High school was a nightmare for me.”
On a sunny day in Los Angeles,
Curtis is with Kristen Bell and Betty
White, who play mother, daughter,
and grandmother, respectively, in the
new fall comedy You Again. The film
tells the story of a former geek (Bell)
who learns her brother is engaged to
her high-school mean-girl nemesis—
and sets out to derail the wedding.
Now the three women have gathered
for a quasi high-school reunion of
their own. Like their on-screen characters, the ladies can each recount life-altering anecdotes from high school as
if they occurred yesterday.
Bell, 30, who starred in the TV series
Veronica Mars as well as films such as
Forgetting Sarah Marshall and When
in Rome, spent her junior year on
the outs with her two best friends—
they were angry with
her for reasons they
wouldn’t divulge. “I
thought maybe I wasn’t
cool enough to hang
out with,” she says. “I
couldn’t understand
what I had done, but I was such a
needy kid, I just wanted to fix it. I was
so scared that people wouldn’t like me
that I would change my personality.”
Betty White, 88, the iconic Golden
Girls actress who is now a costar of the
hit sitcom Hot in Cleveland, escaped
high school relatively unscathed, part-
ly because she didn’t care about being
popular. “I just wasn’t that interested
in getting in with my peer group,” says
White, who in August picked up an
Emmy for her turn earlier in the year as
host of Saturday Night Live . “The social
life was a pain in the ass. I enjoyed be-
ing with guys more than girls.”
Curtis, Bell, and White chatted with
AARP THE MAGAZINE about every-
thing from growing older to bad plastic
surgery—and about what they would
change if life handed them one do-over.
FRIENDS—THEY COME AND GO
>White: I’m still bleeding over losing
Ruesy [the late actress and Golden
Girls costar Rue McClanahan], who
was my dear friend. But as much as
I love my friends, I wouldn’t think of
TAKE A SNEAK PEEK
going out to lunch with a woman. I
can’t think of anything less interesting,
except hen parties and showers—and I
avoid them like the plague.
>Curtis: I love my husband [director
and comedic actor Christopher Guest],
and I’ve been married a very long time
[ 26 years], but I would feel completely
inadequate without a good group of
girlfriends. Still, I’m also learning that
relationships with my girlfriends have
to be fluid. I have friends whom I was
closer with in my 20s or 30s than I am
now. It’s not that I don’t love them,
but the common links have unlinked
a little. It’s important for me to create
new relationships, and that’s hard. I’m
wondering if I should even say this,
because I don’t want friends to read
this and go, “Oh, I’m one of the friends
she’s let go of!”
>Bell: I have a lot of “pick up and put
down” friends whom I haven’t talked
to in months, but I can pick up the
phone and it’s as though we’ve spoken
every day for the last 10 years. Maybe
this is my generation’s thing. Many of
my friends are career driven and don’t
have the hours in the day for the con-
sistency that friendships deserve.
THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF MARK FELLMAN/© DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC.; OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF BEVERLY HILLS HIGH SCHOOL;
A WRINKLE IN TIME
> White: I love that age has its privileges.
You’ve seen enough to be interested in
many different things and make time
Get ready to laugh
out loud watching
the trailer for
Disney's You Again.
Go to aarp.org/
youagain.
