Jamie Lee Curtis has admitted she was once so desperately addicted to drugs that she stole painkillers from her sister.

The 49-year-old star of True Lies and Freaky Friday, who is married to actor and film-maker Lord (formerly Christopher) Haden-Guest, became hooked on the pills after she took them following cosmetic surgery on her eyes when she was 35.

Jamie Lee, the daughter of Hollywood legends Tony Curtis and Psycho star Janet Leigh, says in a frank new interview that she started to use the drugs to get high and combat bouts of ‘loneliness’. For years, off and on, she also drank heavily.

Sultry: Jamie Lee at her glamorous best in the 1985 film Perfect

The glamorous actress, who became Lady Haden-Guest when her husband inherited his title in 1996, initially hid her dependency from her family. ‘No one knew. Chris didn’t have a clue,’ she says.

The star, whose father was infamous for drug-taking, recalls how her sister Kelly was staying at her mansion while recovering from a broken bone and Jamie Lee began pilfering her pills. Finally, she wrote Kelly a heart-breaking letter which she never sent.

Still stunning: Jamie Lee Curtis arriving at the Oscars in 2004

It said: ‘I’ve been harbouring a bad secret. I have found and taken many of your painkillers. I’ve betrayed you, and I know that you’re angry, and you have every right to be. I am lonely. I take them at night to ease the pain. I was so afraid to tell you.’

Jamie Lee says her problems started because of Hollywood’s culture of eternal youth, which led her, 15 years ago, to have her first bout of plastic surgery, after being told by a cameraman on a movie set that she was developing bags under her eyes.  

She was prescribed pills for post-operative pain but began to abuse them and to drink heavily because she feared she was becoming unattractive, not only to her audience but to her husband.

She has said: ‘I attempted various types of plastic surgery, minutely but enough to stave off this encroaching middle-aged body. And every time I did, something went wrong. I felt misshapen, just not natural any more. I think it was a big stimulator of my drug abuse.’                                                                                               
She then reached a stage at which, she confessed, ‘I’d anaesthetise myself on a daily basis’. She says she successfully kicked her habit nine years ago after becoming concerned about the toll her addiction was taking on her daughter, Anne, now 21.

In the new interview, which apppears in More, a leading US women’s magazine, Jamie Lee says that as part of her recovery she decided to let her hair go grey and stopped wearing high heels. But she admits she has found it difficult striking the right balance.

For a time she ‘got so caught up in not caring about body image’ that she was becoming unfit. ‘So I made a change and lost some weight,’ she says.

Jamie Lee now works as a volunteer counsellor on anti-drug campaigns, and when she talks to recovering addicts she advises them to keep reminders of their shame – such as the letter that she wrote to her sister.

Motherly love: With daughter Annie