In 2020, Jamie Lee Curtis' daughter Ruby came out to her parents as a trans woman. At first, Ruby sat Jamie Lee and father Christopher Guest down in the backyard to tell them in person. But she couldn't get the words out. So instead, she left and texted her parents the news.
"It was scary — just the sheer fact of telling them something about me they didn't know," Ruby explained to People. "It was intimidating — but I wasn't worried. They had been so accepting of me my entire life."
Ruby got over her fear, though. And now she's embracing her life in every way possible. For the first time, she's opening up about how she got to a place of radical acceptance.
Jamie Lee says she called her daughter immediately after receiving her text. "Needless to say there were some tears involved," the actress revealed. But Jamie Lee and her husband were completely supportive of Ruby opening up about her identity.
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Jamie Lee also revealed that it's been a huge learning experience for her.
"It's speaking a new language," she says. "It's learning new terminology and words. I am new at it. I am not someone who is pretending to know much about it. And I'm going to blow it, I'm going to make mistakes. I would like to try to avoid making big mistakes."
She also acknowledged how important it becomes to be intentional with your words: "You slow your speech down a little. You become a little more mindful about what you're saying. How you're saying it. You still mess up, I've messed up today twice. We're human."
She added, "But if one person reads this, sees a picture of Ruby and me and says, 'I feel free to say this is who I am,' then it's worth it."
Ruby got really candid in the interview. She even revealed the first time she really understood that she might be living in the wrong body.
"When I was about 16, a friend of mine who is trans asked me what my gender was. I told them, 'Well, I'm male,'" she said.
But that didn't exactly feel right. "After, I'd dwell on the thought. I knew I was — maybe not Ruby per se, but I knew I was different. But I had a negative experience in therapy, so I didn't come out [as trans] immediately when I probably should have. Then, seven years later, still being Tom at the time, I told the person who is now my fiancé that I am probably trans. And they said, 'I love you for who you are.'"
For Jamie Lee, losing Ruby's dead name, "Tom," was and is a struggle.
"When Ruby just said her dead name — I haven't ever heard her say that name. It so doesn't fit anymore," she explained. "That was, of course, the hardest thing. Just the regularity of the word. The name that you'd given a child. That you've been saying their whole life. And so, of course, at first that was the challenge. Then the pronoun. My husband and I still slip occasionally."
Ruby says she doesn't fault her family for making mistakes. But she wants people to get to know her for the person she has embraced being now.
"They finally get to see who I've always been, you know, inside, but now I finally get to show it on the outside," she explained. "But me coming out has nothing to do with my mom being famous. I've tried to stay out of the spotlight for many years, or at least done my best to. I'm happy to be more visible if it helps others."
Jamie Lee says that she supports her daughter in the same ways she supports her other child, because, as a parent, that is her "job."
"I'm a grateful student," she said. "I'm learning so much from Ruby. The conversation is ongoing. But I want to know: How can I do this better?"
Luckily, when it comes to supporting a loved one who has come out as trans, that's the very best question to ask.
