Laurie Strode
Laurie Strode is a fictional character and a main protagonist in the Halloween franchise, appearing in seven of the films in the series, soon to be nine as there are two upcoming movies featuring the character due to be released. Laurie first appeared in John Carpenter's original 1978 film, portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis, who reprised the role in three sequels. She is also the main protagonist in Rob Zombie's 2007 remake and its 2009 sequel, portrayed by Scout Taylor-Compton. In September 2017, it was announced that Curtis signed on to reprise her role in Halloween, which was released in October 2018. The film reboots most of the series and serves as a direct sequel to the original film.
Strode also has a lead role in the Halloween expanded universe, appearing in the novelizations and merchandise based on the films. In 2016, Strode was released alongside Michael Myers as one of the playable characters in the asymmetric survival horror online multiplayer video game Dead by Daylight in which she is voiced by Catherine Lecours. Her attire is based on the outfit she wore during the final scenes of the original Halloween, while her facial features are based on her comic book incarnation. In academic materials, Strode is widely cited as one of the earliest and most influential examples of the "final girl" slasher film archetype.
Appearances
Films
1978
Laurie Strode first appears in the original Halloween. The 17-year-old Laurie is a high school student who has plans to babysit Tommy Doyle on Halloween night, 1978. However, throughout the day, she keeps seeing a mysterious masked man watching her wherever she goes; unbeknownst to her, he is Michael Myers, an escaped mental patient who murdered his sister, Judith Myers, 15 years before and has begun stalking her. Laurie notices Michael watching her and becomes increasingly worried, though her best friends Annie and Lynda brush off her concerns. As Laurie babysits Tommy, Myers kills Annie and Lynda in the house across the street. Growing concerned when they fail to call her, Laurie goes to investigate and sees their corpses laid out for her to find, before being attacked by Michael. Barely escaping, Laurie races back to the Doyle house. Michael follows, but Laurie manages to fend him off long enough for Tommy and Lindsey to escape. Laurie is saved by Dr. Sam Loomis, Michael's psychiatrist, who shoots him off the balcony; when Loomis goes to check Michael's body, he finds it missing. An unsurprised Loomis stares off into the night, while Laurie begins sobbing in terror.1981–2002
Halloween II picks up directly after the first film, with Laurie Strode being taken to a hospital. Upon learning who attacked her, Laurie asks "Why me?!" Laurie says she does know that she was adopted and has a few dreams that offer vague insights into her birth family. The first dream she has is of when she was a little girl, with her adoptive mother saying with a tone of annoyance "I'm not your real mother! Stop asking me questions!" The second dream shows her walking into a large room where a pre-teen Michael is seen sitting in a chair and turning to look at her. Waking up, she begins to roam the hallways of the hospital until coming face to face with Michael, who has been killing his way through the hospital staff in search of her. Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis is told that Michael and Judith Myers are actually Laurie's biological siblings; she was put up for adoption after the death of their parents, with the records sealed to protect the family. With the realization that Michael is after Laurie, Loomis rushes to the hospital to find them. Laurie shoots Michael in the eyes, blinding him, and Loomis causes an explosion in the operating theater, allowing Laurie to escape. Michael, engulfed in flames, stumbles out of the room before finally collapsing. The traumatized Laurie is last seen being transferred to another hospital.In ', Laurie is revealed to have died in a car accident prior to the film's events, with the role of protagonist taken up by her young daughter, Jamie Lloyd. A photograph of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie appears in a scene where Jamie remembers her mother. The character of Jamie would go on to reappear in two more Halloween sequels, while Laurie's adopted cousin Kara and her family appear in '.
Curtis returned as Laurie Strode in ', the seventh film in the series. The screenplay was based on a story by Kevin Williamson. The story was conceived as a sequel to the sixth film, thereby keeping the timeline's continuity, but producers ultimately decided to go with a reboot and ignore the previous three films. In this timeline, Laurie faked her death in a car accident as a way of escaping her murderous brother, whose body was not found after Halloween II. She is now living under the name Keri Tate, and works as the headmistress of a California private school, where her teenage son John is a student. Laurie, who by now has become an alcoholic, is still haunted by memories of her brother's rampage, and lives in fear that he will return. Although John dismisses her as paranoid, her fears become reality when Michael resurfaces on Halloween and murders two of John's classmates. After getting her son and his girlfriend to safety, Laurie decides to stop running and face her brother. She stops Michael, but, unconvinced that he is truly dead, goes on to steal his body and decapitate him.
In ', it is revealed that the man Laurie killed was a paramedic with whom Michael had swapped clothes. The guilt-ridden Laurie is now an inmate at the Grace Andersen Sanitarium, where the nurses believe her to be catatonic. Instead, she is preparing for Michael to return, and when he does, she lures him on to the institution's rooftop. Although he falls into her trap, Laurie's fears of again killing the wrong person get the better of her; when she tries to remove his mask, Michael stabs her and throws her off the roof, to her death.
2007–2009
A new version of Laurie Strode appears in the Rob Zombie remake. This film establishes from the beginning that Laurie is Michael's baby sister, nicknamed "Boo", with whom young Michael shares a close bond. When Michael is institutionalized for killing their older sister Judith, their mother Deborah is unable to cope and commits suicide. The infant Laurie is discovered by Sheriff Brackett, who omits her from the records for her own protection, and she is eventually adopted by the Strode family. The adult Michael escapes and comes home in search of his sister, killing her adoptive parents and her friend Lynda before kidnapping Laurie. Michael tries to make Laurie remember him by showing her a picture of them as children. This fails, and Laurie proceeds to stab Michael with his own knife. Laurie hides as Michael hunts her down in their old childhood home; when he finds her, she shoots him in the head with a gun she took from Michael's psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis, after which she begins screaming hysterically as the scene fades to an old home video of young Michael and baby Laurie.In the sequel, Laurie has moved in with Sheriff Brackett and his daughter Annie. She suffers recurring nightmares about Michael and their mother, and is seeing a therapist to deal with the trauma. Loomis later tells her that she is Michael's sister, and that she also suffers from his "illness". In the film's climax, she tells a mortally wounded Michael that she loves him, before stabbing him to death and putting on his mask. In the film's final scene, she sits in isolation in a psychiatric ward, grinning at a vision of her mother. In the director's cut of the film, Laurie picks up Michael's knife after Michael is killed and walks over to an injured and unconscious Loomis, and the police open fire on Laurie, apparently killing her too.
2018–2021
Curtis reprised her role as Laurie Strode in Halloween. The film ignores all of the previous sequels in the franchise and served as a direct sequel to the 1978 film, taking place 40 years later, and establishing that Michael was arrested following his killing spree in 1978, and institutionalized for 40 years in Smith's Grove Sanitarium. The plot twist from the 1981 sequel of Laurie being Michael's sister also was ignored. In the film, Laurie's granddaughter Allyson explains how her life has been impacted by Michael's reign of terror 40 years earlier. When a friend hints that they heard Michael was Laurie's brother, Allyson replies, "No, it was not her brother, that was something people made up." In this continuity, Laurie suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of Michael's rampage, and has prepared for Michael's potential return through combat training; she has been divorced twice, became an alcoholic, and lost custody of her daughter, Karen. Michael eventually escapes again and returns to Haddonfield for another killing spree. Michael is taken to Laurie's home by his deranged psychologist and engages in a showdown with Laurie, who severely injures him and severs two of his fingers, but he stabs her in the stomach and pushes her over a balcony; when Michael goes to check Laurie's body, he finds it missing, before being attacked by a very much alive Laurie. Trapping him inside the basement safe room, Laurie, Karen and Allyson set the house ablaze, and the trio escapes in the back of a passing pickup truck.Literature
Laurie Strode's first literary appearance was in October 1979, in Curtis Richards' novelization of Halloween, which largely follows the events of the film. She also appeared in the 1981 adaptation of Halloween II written by Jack Martin; it was published alongside the first film sequel, with the novel following the film events, with an additional victim, a reporter, added to the novel.Laurie appears in the twist ending of the comic book Halloween III: The Devil's Eyes. While examining Loomis' diaries in the hopes of finding out more about Michael Myers, an adult Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace are attacked by a person dressed as Michael. They unmask the figure to reveal Laurie Strode, who has taken on her brother's mantle. At the conclusion of the book, Laurie kills Tommy and is subsequently incarcerated in Smith's Grove, where Dr. Terence Wynn takes an interest in her. This story follows on from Halloween H20, but is set in a non-canon timeline contradicted by the release of Halloween: Resurrection.
The anthology one-shot comic Halloween: 30 Years of Terror includes a Laurie Strode storyline entitled "Visiting Hours". Set between H20 and Resurrection, it shows Laurie in the Grace Anderson Sanitarium, where she wonders how her life could have been if Michael hadn't found her in 1978. In this alternate universe, she lives a happy life in which her friends are still alive, but the memory of Michael invades her fantasy world and leaves her with nothing. Laurie concludes that "I can't even dream of a normal life without killing it", and can do nothing but wait for her brother's inevitable "visit" to set her free. Laurie appears prominently in the comic book limited series Halloween: The First Death of Laurie Strode; set after Halloween II, it depicts the events which led to her faking her death.
Video games
Strode made her video game debut with the 1983 Atari video game Halloween. The game is rare to find, often being played on emulators. No characters from the films are specifically named, with the goal of the game focusing on the player, who is a babysitter, protecting children from a "homicidal maniac has escaped from a mental institution". Laurie Strode was added as a playable character, alongside Michael Myers, in downloadable content for Dead by Daylight released in October 2016. Her biography states:Casting
In an interview, Carpenter admits that "Jamie Lee wasn't the first choice for Laurie. I had no idea who she was. She was 19 and in a TV show at the time, but I didn't watch TV." He originally wanted to cast Anne Lockhart, the daughter of June Lockhart from Lassie, as Laurie Strode. Lockhart, however, had commitments to several other film and television projects. Debra Hill says upon learning that Curtis was the daughter of Psycho star Janet Leigh, "I knew casting Jamie Lee would be great publicity for the film because her mother was in Psycho."Reception
Laurie has been compared to the character of Sally Hardesty from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre by a variety of scholars. James Rose notes the parallels between Laurie and Sally, stating:Editor Stefano Lo Verme compared Curtis' performance as Laurie to the performances of Sandra Peabody as Mari Collingwood in The Last House on the Left and Marilyn Burns as Sally in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.