Jamie Lee Curtis, the star of John Carpenter’s original 1978 horror movie Halloween, has been discussing the impact her breakthrough movie has had on her glittering career.

In truth, the opportunity to work on the film came at her lowest point having been recently fired from a job with ABC. Taking about the “game-changing” moment in a new interview with NME, she said: “It was a little tiny pish of a horror movie shot in 20 days. I’m being honest.

“I mean, it’s nice that it has a fanbase… I’m not trying to be facetious or cute or clever,” she added as the film begins to celebrate its 40th anniversary with a glitzy remake. “Although I do try to do that often… It just bothers me because there’s some feeling that this was some preordained, planned mastermind and that’s just bullshit.

She added: “John Carpenter will be the first person to tell you. We were making an exploitation slasher movie about killing babysitters. And that’s what it was. Shot in 20 days, shot for nothing. Fast, furious, vicious and what it became really had nothing to do with the intent of the work. The intent of the work was to make a movie and then, as a young filmmaker, make another movie. It became then the thing you could get another job from, not that it was going to become something.”

With Halloween in full flow and horror films high on the priority of most people trying to spook themselves and their friends, Jamie Lee Curtis, the queen of horror, made the honest admission: “I do not like horror movies. I do not say this for a joke, although it gets a laugh, I really don’t.

She continued: “There’s nothing I like about being scared. I’m this person [puts hands over her face]. I sing songs to myself when things are terrifying. I mean, fucking Aladdin scared me. I’m not joking! You know when Jafar becomes a dragon? With his red eyes and stuff? That shit scared me.”

Read the full interview, here.