Jamie Lee Curtis hams it up in Christmas with the Kranks.

Jamie Lee Curtis marches into the chic Manhattan penthouse suite waving a bottle of anti-bacterial lotion.

"I have germ gel if you need it," she practically hollers. "My poor husband is sick and has been cooped up in the hotel room for four days now. Whenever he comes near me, I'm like this" - she mimes keeping him at arm's length - "Hi honey."

Slinking her tall, curvaceous frame into a leather armchair, the 46-year-old former pin-up chatters away in her open style.

"I can't get sick, I'm on a press tour," she rattles on. "I've even squirted essential oils on to a napkin and rubbed down every door handle in the hotel. "

"So, can I quote that you are refusing to touch your husband?" I semi-joke.

Curtis smiles and quips "Yeah, I can see the headline: American actress doesn't touch husband after 20 years of marriage."

Her husband is the film-maker Christopher Guest (otherwise known as Lord Haden-Guest, the fifth Baron of Saling in Essex), creator of several cult comic movies, including This Is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind and Best In Show. The couple have two adopted children, Annie, 18, and Thomas, 8.

Curtis looks fit in a figure-hugging, black V-neck sweater, black trousers and heeled leather boots. Her silver-grey, boyish crop accentuates her soft, pool-blue eyes, inherited, she remarks, from her father.

Despite her continuous self-criticism - she often calls herself "stupid" - she is a best-selling author, having penned five children's books. But pay her a compliment - whether it's for her high cheekbones or her comic timing - and she'll acidly retort: "Oh pleeeaze ... stop flattering me, I know the truth, I'm no Meryl Streep." She bows down as if in prayer every time she mentions the name "Streep" and is so comically self-deprecating that you can't help but laugh along with her. Maybe she needs to take a page out of one of her own books: I'm Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem?

"I was lucky enough to be born into the acting world, but I was never overly driven. I don't think I'm a talent so earth-shattering that the world will suffer if I bail out," she says.

"I've been an actor for almost all of my life and it has always been very easy for me to act, in the sense of just being a kid. It was always a breeze for me to approximate other people. If I was playing a secretary, I could sit here and blow your mind with my secretarial skills. I have always chosen to build the character with subtleties such as the costuming and the hair.

"And then, of course, I watch great actors at work. You know, Meryl Streep ... and a lot is made of their craft.

"I'm not saying on any level I need to be compared to Meryl Streep. All I'm saying is that I do very intricate work. If you look at A Fish Called Wanda, my character dresses differently for every one of those men she is with. I've carved that and that's how I build a character."

The daughter of veteran movie stars Tony Curtis, 79, and Janet Leigh (who died in October, at 77), Curtis was blessed with an impeccable pedigree and jackpot genetics. Her own noteworthy performances have, ironically, been in horror and comedy, the two genres which catapulted her parents to fame: Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Curtis in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot.

She made her name as the "Scream Queen" in horror movies such as the Halloween franchise, before going on to wow John Travolta with her killer bod (as an aerobics instructor) in Perfect (1985), flirting with John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and stripping for secret agent Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994). Last year she won over a younger demographic when she switched bodies with her on-screen teenage daughter in Freaky Friday.

Today, however, she announces the time has arrived for her to draw the curtains on her 26-year career. "Christmas with the Kranks will be my last movie," she says.

"I need to spend more time raising my kids and just being a mum. I feel like the only person in the world who wants me right now is my son. I don't really see I have a choice. My family needs me.

"Even this movie caused them a lot of stress, because for 14 weeks I wasn't home every day. I wasn't picking my son up from school. I didn't make dinner, and I didn't help him do his homework. I'm showing up right before he goes to bed, just in time to read him a story."

She shrugs. "I'm around a lot and then I disappear, so it's very weird for them. I'm a very big presence and I'm a micro manager. I would check the temperature of the coffee if you were coming to my house, and I do that with my children in every area of their lives. So when I go to work, even though I've hired people and I have a wonderful support team, it's still not me."

But family issues aside, there's another reason why Curtis is calling it a day; that old Hollywood favourite - age. "It also has to do with the fact that I'm getting older, and I'm not looking so good. I'm not saying I'm ageing horribly. But I may not want to look at my face grow older." She winces at the thought.

"Some people age better than others. There's a point when it's just a natural evolution, and I think there comes a point when I don't want to be photographed any more. I don't mind looking at my face in the mirror, with some nice lighting, at home, but I'm not sure I want to look at it on a 150ft screen at 58 years old."

Curtis grew up with her sister, Kelly, 48, also an actress, as Tinseltown royalty, but her parents went through a bitter divorce when she was 3.

Understandably, memories of her mother are still raw: "She was an amazing woman. She loved this business. She would want me to work all the time. I'd be: 'I can't, I've got to take care of my kids'. And she'd be: 'They will be fine. Do your work'. That was who she was. She certainly wouldn't want me to be at home, mourning her."

Curtis has known turbulent times, at one stage developing a cocaine habit which she kicked in 1983. In 1994 her half-brother Nicholas, then 23, died of a drug overdose. During her hazy, bingeing years, she dated the singer Adam Ant and was briefly engaged to the production designer Michael Riva. In 1999 she gave up booze for good.

A major change for the better came in 1984, when she met Guest, but she never wanted to work with him.

Clearly her forte is slapstick, which she performs with ease in Christmas with the Kranks. Based on the John Grisham novel Skipping Christmas, it's about a couple who decide to skip the festivities now that their daughter has flown the nest.

Curtis is half-Jewish, and celebrates what she nicknames "Chronikah" which, she points out, equals pure pressure. "It's a woman's burden and a man and kids' holiday," she says, sighing.

"The morning after, all of that work is lying on the floor in the form of ripped-up paper. And nobody's happier. You're just sitting there looking at each other, going 'now what?'

"Gift-giving doesn't bring you closer. It's a terribly disappointing holiday, but you know what? We seem to repeat it each year!"

On screen

* Who: Jamie Lee Curtis, star of Christmas With the Kranks

* Where and when: In cinemas, on now

- INDEPENDENT