Kelly Curtis

Kelly Lee Curtis was born on June 17, 1956, Father's Day that year, in Santa Monica, California, the elder daughter of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Her younger sister, Jamie Lee Curtis, was born in 1958. She made her first screen appearance as a young girl in The Vikings (1958), which starred both her parents.

Her parents divorced in 1962 and her mother married financier Robert Brandt, who helped raise Kelly and Jamie Lee in Los Angeles and later brought the family to Idaho. Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish. Through her father's later marriages she had four half-siblings: Alexandra, Allegra, Nicholas and Benjamin Curtis.

Curtis graduated from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, with a degree in business (Wikipedia, citing People, gives 1978) and worked briefly as a stockbroker. She then studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and became a member of the Actors Studio in New York.

On stage, Curtis played Ginny in Say Goodnight, Gracie in Los Angeles in 1982, earning praise from the Los Angeles Times. On screen she played Muffy in Trading Places (1983), which also featured her sister, then starred as Shirley in the German comedy Magic Sticks (1987) and as Miriam Kreisl in Michele Soavi's The Devil's Daughter (1991, also known as La setta or The Sect), co-written and produced by Dario Argento. Other films included Checkpoint (1987), Ex-Cop (1992), Mixed Blessings (1998) and the short June (1998).

On television she guest starred in The Renegades (1983), The Equalizer (1986 and 1988), Hunter (1991), Silk Stalkings (1992), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993, as Miss Sarda in "Captive Pursuit"), LateLine and Judging Amy (both 1999). She appeared in TV movies Kojak: Ariana (1989), Thanksgiving Day (1990), False Arrest (1991) and Search and Rescue (1994), and was a regular as Lieutenant Carolyn Plummer in the first season of The Sentinel (1996).

Later she worked as an assistant to Jamie Lee Curtis on Freaky Friday (2003), Christmas with the Kranks (2004) and You Again (2010).

With her second husband, filmmaker John Marsh, Curtis founded Liberty Films in Bellevue, Idaho. The pair made films and documentaries about local artists and musicians and the landscape of the Wood River Valley. She directed the 2018 documentary Marby Jets Are Go, about an Australian high school track team.

Curtis married playwright Scott Morfee on September 14, 1989; at the time they were working together on his musical theatre piece Shout and Twist, in which she appeared and which she produced. She later married John Marsh. The couple renovated an old Victorian home in Bellevue and dedicated themselves to its preservation before donating it to the community as a preservation site. She was a member of the Wood River Jewish Community.

To her nieces and nephews she was "Auntie Cookie," for the powdered almond crescent cookies she made at Christmas. She collected turtles, loved hearts (the card game), music, thrifting, travel, Facebook and Pokémon Go, and signed off messages with the Hungarian blessing "Isten Veled" (God is with you).

Curtis was proud of her Danish roots and Hungarian Jewish ancestry, and her sister described her as a devoted American patriot. With her father she helped raise a significant sum to refurbish and restore the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest through the Emanuel Foundation, named after Tony Curtis's father, Emanuel Schwartz. In 1996 she appeared with her mother and sister in a breast cancer awareness public service announcement.

Though often described through her famous family, Curtis built her own career across stage, film and television, and later a second life as a documentary maker in Idaho. Her lead in The Devil's Daughter keeps her a familiar face to fans of Italian horror, and Star Trek and Sentinel audiences remember her guest and series work. In Idaho her legacy includes local documentaries and a preserved Victorian house given to the community.

Curtis appeared with Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis in television features about famous mothers and daughters, and with Jamie Lee in the 2007 What A Pair benefit concert series. In 2006 the two sisters spoke at the ceremony in Stockton, California, where a plaza was named for their mother. She attended family events such as the 2012 Beverly Hills premiere of Hitchcock with her sister.

Kelly Curtis died at her home in Bellevue, Idaho, at about 2:30 a.m. on May 30, 2026, aged 69. The Blaine County coroner's office said she died of natural causes and had been receiving hospice care in the week before her death; she was expected to be cremated. Jamie Lee Curtis announced the death on Instagram and Facebook the same morning. A quiet meditation and relaxed Shiva was held at Wood River Chapel in Hailey, Idaho, on June 12, 2026, with a Yahrzeit gathering planned a year later. The family asked that gifts go to the Idaho State Historical Society.