Jamie Lee Curtis may have never become an actor at all, if not for how the stars aligned in her life. Speaking at the annual Grants Dinner Banquet, sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Jamie Lee Curtis spoke about how her life might have gone very differently.

“I fell into the entertainment industry,” Jamie Lee Curtis said. “If luck, if the confluence of my life had not occurred in the way it did, I would’ve never been an actor. I would’ve been a cop.”

Jamie Lee Curtis did go to college, but only for one semester. She had never declared a major, but has said she considered majoring in social work. She dropped out to focus on pursuing acting. Curtis may call her acting career the result of “luck,” but she came by that luck differently than most.

Curtis is the daughter of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. It is fitting that Jamie Lee Curtis’ first role, and many of her subsequent roles, would be in the Halloween films. Her mom Janet Leigh is one of the most iconic scream queens of Hollywood, best known for her shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

imagine all the fake lips jamie lee curtis wouldve gotten if she was a child of famous ppl today

— Lksa (@slatkaleksa) August 8, 2015

While Jamie Lee Curtis went on to do several other horror genre films, including The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, and Roadgames, she later broke out of that genre to rack up awards in drama and comedy. Her first foray out of the land of fake blood and hockey masks was Trading Places, sharing the screen with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. Then came A Fish Called Wanda, and later True Lies, which featured Curtis in a strip-tease scene that was simultaneously sexy and hilarious.

Speaking of sexy, Jamie Lee Curtis’ role opposite John Travolta in Perfect established her as a body to be reckoned with. She has held that image, even as she ages gracefully. It is a fashionable thing nowadays for stars to embrace their grey hair, or even for young celebs to color grey. Jamie Lee Curtis beat them all to that. Plus, she has brought dignity and vitality to her role as spokesperson for a yogurt product that helps people go poop.

Jamie Lee Curtis has not entirely abandoned her horror film roots. She has returned to the Halloween franchise again adn again, including when her scream queen mother joined her for Halloween: H20. Leigh had appeared in The Fog with Jamie Lee before.

Now Curtis is embracing her scream queen origins as the dame of the upcoming Scream Queens series on Fox.

Curtis is married to Christopher Guest, best known for his mockumentary films such as Waiting for Guffman, and A Mighty Wind, as well as his role in The Princess Bride as Count Rugen, the six-fingered villain.

Jamie Lee Curtis may call it luck or a confluence, but she was raised in the business. Insomuch as she did not really go out blindly hunting down acting success as many have, she is right.

Jamie Lee Curtis gave us Halloween and Activia wow

— burnt sienna miller (@dmv_520) August 14, 2015