Janet Leigh will always be remembered for letting out some of the best screams during one of the most frightening scenes in cinema history. As an unlucky hotel guest in PSYCHO, Leigh made us all want to check the bathroom door before showering. And this month with the re-release of the restored version of the Orson Welles' noir classic TOUCH OF EVIL, Leigh reminds us all again what happens to a fabulous blonde in a noir classic who ends up in the wrong hotel room...

Of course, Leigh is more than just a woman with really, really bad luck with hotels. Her career stretches out over five decades of American cinema and includes collaborations with directors from Hitchcock to Welles to Frankenheimer. Her resume includes nearly 70 films in which she performed along with Jimmy Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Errol Flynn and Gary Cooper. She's even done a cameo in HALLOWEEN H20: Twenty Years Later, with her daughter Jamie Leigh Curtis, who became a sort of scream queen in her own right with the Halloween films.

Leigh, an only child who skipped several grades and finished high school at 15, was discovered while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. At the time MGM was looking for someone to play a sort of naive, young country girl and Janet fit the role perfectly. Soon she had a starring role in THE ROMANCE OF ROSY RIDGE (1947). Her career in film had begun.

Today Leigh travels and speaks frequently on behalf of AMC and the Library of Congress about film preservation. Next year, she will publish her fourth book, HOUSE OF SECRETS, and she will be seen in the theatrical release A FATE TOTALLY WORSE THAN DEATH. In the following interview, Leigh gives the word on the newly restored TOUCH OF EVIL, the week long shoot for the shower scene in PSYCHO and why there will never be a sequel to NIGHT OF THE LEPUS.

DVDFILE: You've enjoyed a really remarkable career in film over many decades. If you look at the list of films you've done on the Internet Movie Database, you see that, in addition to classics like PSYCHO and TOUCH OF EVIL, you've been in such a variety of films over the years. You had the opportunity to do an amazingly wide range of roles and work with so many different people.

JANET LEIGH: I have been very fortunate to have done such a variety of films. Luckily I just didn't get put in that corner that so often happens when you start out as an ingenue at 18. Very often you get placed in on category and then you never get out. From the beginning I've just been so, so lucky, you know? I played drama right away. I played swashbucklers. I played old-fashioned classics like LITTLE WOMEN. I played the dark Fred Zinneman, ACT OF VIOLENCE. NAKED SPUR. It's just been a wonderful array of projects that have been thrown my way. And I know I've been so lucky.

DF: Did being part of the studio system help you develop as an actress or hinder your development?

JL: During the studio system you were assigned pictures. Each one was very advantageous. As much as the studio system was maligned, I'm a believer in it. It's very easy to Monday morning quarterback and say that was all bad. Well, it wasn't all bad. It may not fit for today's world or today's market but it sure fit then. I'm here to defend it. What they did was they built someone who had no experience put her with people who were very talented and great actors and allowed her to have these wonderful kinds of different roles and always in the company of people who could lead her and develop her talent. Then, finally, you reach a point where maybe you can carry a picture but you've earned that right. You've been schooled. It's been planned for you. There's continuity. And that's, I believe, how each step is set in stone and not in straw.

DF: So you were really educated as you made films?

JL: Yes and I think whatever God given talent or instinct was there was developed hopefully with each role. And I worked very hard to learn and not to lose what's natural so that I could develop what was there and develop as a person because I think every time you grow as a person you grow as an actress. You can't separate yourself from the role. Even though you're playing a different person you're still yourself. So, you bring that maturity or that education or whatever you want to call it to that role. Even in the way you approach the role, you have a more in-depth feeling for the character as you grow. And so all of that contributed to the fact that I was lucky to be allowed all those different challenges. And that has helped to build a firm foundation.

DF: Did you have a sense at the time which pictures would become classics and which ones would become real cornerstones in your career?

JL: Believe me, every time I did a script or a picture, I did it as though it was the best picture in the world. That's the only way to do it. I don't know how to do it any other way. Even with bad pictures I did that. I didn't say at the beginning, "This is a piece of you know what and I'm not even going to try." In all honesty, I made a bad picture in the 1970s called NIGHT OF THE LEPUS, and I certainly didn't approach that picture that way.

DF: NIGHT OF LEPUS is a real sci-fi classic, though. Lots of people really love that movie.

JL: It's a cult picture now which is funny to me. You know, it was the scifi time in the 1970s. It was the time of animals and experiments and mad scientists and this script came and it read really great and I liked it. I read it and I was scared and it made sense to me. So, I said yes (to making NIGHT OF THE LEPUS). And, I don't care if the rabbit is six feet tall, the rabbit is still Peter Rabbit. When you see those rabbits on the screen you think, "Oh, it's a cute bunny rabbit." And afterwards it was sheer disaster, I thought. I've actually had someone come to me to make a sequel to NIGHT OF THE LEPUS and I turned it down.

DF: I can't blame them for wanting to do that at all. It's a cult picture that's really loved.

JL: That is so strange to me. I turned it down. I said, "No, I'm sorry. I'm past that now." But I gave (NIGHT OF THE LEPUS) my all because that's our job. You certainly know going onto some pictures that the film isn't going to win an Academy Award. But it's not our job to win Academy Awards. Our job is to do the best with what we've been given and entertain people and give people pleasure. Now, on NAKED SPUR, I felt I'd been handed a dream role. Here's one young lady and four guys and a mule and horse in the whole picture. What more can you ask? It was a fascinating script. It was the first sort of noir Western. And only Jimmy Stuart could have played that role because the character was so close to being a bad guy. With Jimmy Stuart there was such innate decency underneath the harshness and he walked that fine line between the two so brilliantly. I did feel that that was so different that it had a chance of becoming something more than just a good picture. And it has. It's in the Library of Congress.

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