Kelly Curtis, the actress and eldest daughter of Hollywood royalty Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, died Saturday morning at her home in Bellevue, Idaho. She was 69.
Her younger sister Jamie Lee Curtis announced the death on Facebook, writing: “A warm aloha to my older sister, Kelly Lee Curtis. She passed away this morning. In her home. In nature. At peace.” No cause of death has been disclosed.
Jamie Lee described her sister as “my first friend and lifelong confidant,” adding that she was “jaw droppingly beautiful, and a talented actress” who “played a mean game of hearts, collected turtles, loved her family, nature, music, thrifting, travel, Facebook, and Pokémon Go.”
Born in Santa Monica in 1956, Kelly Curtis made her screen debut alongside her younger sister in the 1983 comedy Trading Places — the film that launched Jamie Lee’s comedy career. She went on to star in the 1987 German comedy Magic Sticks and played Lieutenant Carolyn Plummer in the first season of UPN’s action series The Sentinel, with one-off television roles in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Equalizer, Hunter, Silk Stalkings, and Judging Amy. In later years, she also worked as her sister’s on-set assistant on Freaky Friday, Christmas With the Kranks, and You Again.
Her most recent work was as a documentary director. Her 2018 film Marby Jets Are Go followed an Australian high school track team. She ran the documentary production company Liberty Films with her second husband, John Marsh, a filmmaker and professor emeritus at the College of Southern Nevada.
Kelly and her father had also worked together on a philanthropic effort to restore the historic Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary, through the Emanuel Foundation — named after Tony Curtis’s father, Emanuel Schwartz — reflecting the family’s Hungarian Jewish heritage.
Jamie Lee remembered her sister as someone who would “be remembered for her loving generosity, fierce opinions, endless curiosity, unique style, and her powdered, almond, crescent cookies at Christmas, hence her name, Auntie Cookie.”
Survivors include her husband John Marsh and her brother-in-law Christopher Guest, as well as half-siblings Alexandra, Allegra, and Ben. A half-brother, Nicholas, died in 1994 of a heroin overdose at age 23.
