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Kelly Curtis

American actress

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ273574
Source-derived summary

Kelly Lee Curtis (June 17, 1956 – May 30, 2026) was an American actress. She was known for her roles in Magic Sticks (1987) and The Devil's Daughter (1991).

Early life

Kelly Lee Curtis was born on June 17, 1956, in Santa Monica, California, the elder child of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. She was the older sister of actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, and two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish. The rest of her mother's ancestry was German and Scots-Irish. She had four half-siblings from her father's later marriages: Alexandra Curtis, Allegra Curtis, Nicholas Curtis (who died of a drug overdose) and Benjamin Curtis.

Curtis made her first appearance on film as a young girl in the United Artists action-adventure The Vikings (1958), which starred her parents. Her parents divorced in 1962, and her mother later married Robert Brandt.

In 1978, she graduated from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, with a degree in business, and worked briefly as a stockbroker.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Kelly Curtis” as american actress. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kelly, Curtis and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 2026, 1987, 1991—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1956-06-17. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Kelly, Curtis and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Kelly Curtis”, the useful work is to connect “american actress” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q273574. VIAF identifies the subject as 311673204. The Library of Congress control number is no2015167104. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2026, 1987 and 1991.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Kelly Curtis”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Kelly Curtis primary sources, Kelly Curtis archive and Kelly research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Kelly Curtis”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Kelly Curtis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.