Yahoo News Jamie Lee Curtis' life-changing connection to Princess Diana started with her on a pee break
When nature calls, nature really calls.
Jamie Lee Curtis is opening up about the life-changing connection she made with Princess Diana that started with an ill-timed pee break, of all things, in the newest edition of Time to Walk — the Apple Fitness+ audio experience feature on iPhone and Apple Watch.
In the clip, Curtis recounts how she was shooting what she calls the "terrible sequel" to A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures, in London in 1995. "We had been told that day that Princess Diana and her children were going to come visit," she says. "And I admired her so much. We shot all morning, and when we took a tea break, for me, it was a pee break, I jumped in a golf cart and drove the two miles back to the dressing room. I'm in my dressing room peeing when there was a pounding on the door, 'Princess Diana is here!'"
The Everything Everywhere All at Once star says that by the time the two-mile trek back to set was over, the Princess and her sons were already leaving, and she didn't feel it was appropriate to run or yell after them. So, she wrote Diana a letter, and had it delivered to her residence at Kensington Palace.
"It said, 'I'm so sorry we didn't get to meet. I was very much looking forward to it as I admire you greatly. Unfortunately, nature called, and they don't give me many breaks, so I chose nature over you, not knowing that you were going to arrive right at that moment. I'm so sorry and just think you're great. My best wishes, Jamie,'" she recalls. "The next day, I got a letter delivered from Kensington Palace from Her Royal Highness Princess Diana, saying, 'I'm so sorry I didn't get to meet you, also. I admire you, and I totally understand when nature calls. Of course you should choose that. I hope that we will have an opportunity in our lives to meet. Best wishes always.' It was just a beautiful letter, which I still have."
Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty; Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty
Two years later, when Curtis learned that Princess Diana had died in a car wreck in Paris, she opened a book on her nightstand by Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein called The Path to Insight Meditation. The actress says she thought of Diana reading the preface of the book which begins, "When people have tried to live mindfully, at the time of their death, they ask themselves two questions: Did I learn to live wisely? And did I love well?"
She came to the conclusion that the royal both lived wisely and loved well through her relationship with her sons and all of the AIDS activism she did.
"And then I realized that, if this book was correct, that meant whether or not it was cut terribly short, her life was complete," Curtis says. "And on that tragic day, those questions became the questions of my daily life. I don't go to bed at night without asking those questions." She concludes, "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about it. That has become the framework of my life."
Curtis' episode of Time to Walk is available now.
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