At 62, Demi Moore finally feels ‘liberated’ from her own self

LOS ANGELES, USA – Showered with praise for her performance in the body horror film The Substance, Demi Moore recalled how one comment struck her — and it neither came from the media nor the movie critics. 

“I had someone come up to me, a flight attendant, on a plane, a man, and say, ‘I saw your movie, you were great.’ But what he said that was most important is, ‘And it really made me stop and look at what I was doing to myself and completely change how harsh I was with all these things, dieting and all this stuff,’” Demi shared.

“I literally felt like that was the greatest gift I could possibly have had from this…to know that it actually made a difference in how someone is looking at themselves.”

In promoting the movie late last year, Demi, now 62 years old, talked about aging and the toxic beauty culture in Hollywood.

It made her look at her own career, breaking out in About Last Night and St. Elmo’s Fire, starring in blockbusters in the ‘80s and ‘90s, from Ghost to GI Jane, then later seeing offers for top film roles dwindle as younger actresses came into the scene.

And The Substance ran quite parallel to that. In writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s twisted, satirical film, Demi played Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister “past her prime,” now reduced to being a fitness TV show host, and dealt with a bigger insult: She was fired.

Desperate, Elisabeth turns to a mysterious new drug that transforms her into a 20-something (Margaret Qualley), but there’s a catch, of course.

“It was something where I felt like, it was also exploring this idea of not just aging but that violence that we can have against ourselves, which I feel is such a human relationship relatable issue that we all share,” said Demi.

“I just didn’t know if it was going to all work. That was the variable.”

But it did work. So much so that it won Demi her first acting award after four decades, bagging Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy in the recent Golden Globes.

Stunned, Demi nonetheless spoke movingly about her role in her acceptance speech.

“Oh wow!” the Armani-gowned actress exclaimed in front of the star-studded audience at The Beverly Hilton. “I really wasn’t expecting that. I’m just in shock right now.”

“I’ve been doing this a long time, like over 45 years and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor. And I am just so humbled and so grateful.”

Demi candidly shared how she had long embraced her place in the industry, starring in blockbusters but hardly getting acknowledged for her work.

“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress’ and, at that time, I made that mean that this (award) wasn’t something that I was allowed to have. That I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in and I believed that,” said Demi.

“And that corroded me over time, to the point where I thought, a few years ago, that maybe this was it. Maybe I was complete. Maybe I’d done what I was supposed to do.”

“And as I was at kind of a low point,” Demi continued, “I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance. And the universe told me that you’re not done.”

Demi relished the moment, and deservingly so.

“And I’ll just leave you with one thing that I think this movie is imparting,” Demi tells an enraptured crowd. “In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough, or skinny enough or successful enough, or basically just not enough — I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know, you will never be enough. But you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’”

“And so today, I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness, and of the love that is driving me, and for the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong.” 

It was an eloquent verbal kick from the “popcorn actress” to that producer.

‘Less desirable’

Comedian Nikki Glaser, who hosted the 82nd edition of the Globes, quipped onstage: “If you’re a woman over 50 in a lead role, they call it a comeback. If you’re a guy over 50 in a lead role, congratulations, you’re about to play Sydney Sweeney’s boyfriend.” (Actress Sydney is 27.)

But for every Demi, Jodie Foster, and Jean Smart — the latter two were also Best Actress winners in the TV categories of the Globes last January 5 — who are still enjoying thriving careers, there are countless actresses over 50, even 40, who can no longer land roles.

“Who says that you’re less desirable after 50? Who says that that’s the truth?” Demi said.

“I think as we are, as women, finding more value in who we are at various ages, sizes, races, cultures, that the more we’re taking ownership, the more that the outside world is opening up and the place is being taken. That’s always existed.”

In recent years, Demi also opted to take some time off to take care of her three growing girls with Bruce Willis, from whom she is divorced. She was also married to Ashton Kutcher and musician Freddy Moore.

The actress, who spends time with Bruce who is suffering from frontotemporal dementia, took jobs in television. The Substance’s success put her back on the top.

With Demi’s victory in the Globes, many award pundits are also predicting that she will be the Oscars’ Best Actress frontrunner when the Academy announces its nominations on January 19.

Backstage after winning the award, Demi said her character Elisabeth would be thrilled with her Best Actress triumph.

“Oh, I think this would be a shining glorious moment. Everything that she had been hoping for,” she quipped, before noting how the movie really made an impact to many.

“I think it had a profound effect,” she said. “The response has been really just extraordinary, and so much more than I ever expected. It resonated on such a deep level.”

100-day shooting

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat shared that several actresses turned down the role before Demi came along.

“I had some rejections,” Coralie said. “Some actresses turned the part down. At some point, we were researching ideas. I was discussing with my producers and the name of Demi came up in the conversation.” 

“I said, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s a great idea but please, let’s not lose time with that because I think she will never want to do this. I truly believed that she wouldn’t be ready to play with her image the way the movie needed.”

Coralie sent the script to Demi anyway, and to her surprise, “she immediately responded in a very, very strong way.” 

“From then, we met, we discussed a lot about the specifics of the movie because I really wanted her to know exactly what she would step into,” she said. 

“Everything we talked about — the 100-day shootings, shooting in France with heavy prosthetics, with not a huge Hollywood machine behind us that she was probably used to in the movies she’s done in the past.”

“Also, the level of nudity that the movie requests because it’s a real way to tell what the movie is about and each shot has a meaning,” Coralie added. “It was important for me that she understood and felt at ease with that because it was crystal clear in the script that the movie was a vision.”

“It was really something super specific that I had in my mind that I needed to express in a certain way.”

The French filmmaker shared that it also helped when she read Demi’s 2019 autobiography Inside Out.

“I discovered something very different from the image I had of her,” said Coralie. “Someone who really meant herself on her own, who took many risks in her life…I discovered someone who really rocks, someone who’s really rock and roll.”

“I said, ‘Okay, she does have the level of mindset and risk-taking that the movie needs,’” she added. “That’s what started this great collaboration — that all the cards were on the table, and it was clear that this movie was going to be unconventional and it would be a risk-taking project, basically.”

Turning 60

Demi won the Globes over Angelina Jolie (Maria), Amy Adams (Nightbitch), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Zendaya (Challengers), and Mikey Madison (Anora), with a speech that instantly joined Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey’s powerful speeches in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

Jodie also touched on Demi’s emotional acceptance remarks backstage with the media, after winning the Best Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television for True Country: Night Country. 

“I think something happens. There’s like an organism that gets released in your bloodstream,” said Jodie, who, at 62 like Demi, reflected on reaching the “golden years.”

“It just feels like there’s a hormone that happens where suddenly you go, ‘Oh, I don’t really care about all the stupid things anymore and I’m not going to compete with myself,’” she said.

“I’m excited about what’s left of my life and who I become, and the wisdom that I can bring to the table. So, for me, this is the most contented moment of my career and I never would have known that.”

“I just never would have known that,” Jodie added. “But something happened the day I turned 60, and it all just came to pass.”

In an earlier press conference, Demi also discussed the other films this year that tackle “aging woman” themes, including Nicole Kidman’s Babygirl and Amy Adams’ Nightbitch, saying there now seems to be a “collective consciousness around this idea of accepting ourselves, loving ourselves.”

“And I don’t think that it’s exclusive to women,” said Demi. “I think in The Substance, in particular, it really is about looking at the way in which we can be so harshly critical of ourselves. And because in the end, it’s not what anybody’s doing to us.” 

“It’s what we do to ourselves that creates our experience and our reality in life,” she said. “And at the same time, it’s also one of the most powerful recognitions of being able to create change when we can stop looking on the outside of us and go within ourselves.”

‘All that I am vs all that I am not’

Coralie, who’s also behind the film Revenge, said zeroing in on the youth-centric culture in The Substance goes beyond Hollywood.

“The whole world still embraces that culture. It’s everywhere around us,” she said, detailing how people think when “you’re young and beautiful and sexy and smiling, you will be happy, people will look at you, you will be loved, and you will be successful.”

“To me, it’s not really about Hollywood,” said Coralie. “It’s the whole world that has been built on a certain pattern that has shaped women through the lens of, basically men, who were looking at them and were saying — this we like, this  we don’t like, this we think is sexy, this we think is worse.”

Demi said the movie is “a reflection of the beauty standards that have been in place, and in many respects, in an unspoken way, in a conscious agreement that was almost like a silent agreement.”

“What it did for me was just expand again on the idea of the circumstances in Hollywood and society as a whole,” said Demi. “But it’s a lot of what we, as women, have also agreed to in this idea that in aging out, you are sidelined, or that you are less desirable or less valuable. I don’t think it’s necessarily the truth but I think that there is a collective consciousness.”

In doing The Substance, Demi said she felt like she “walked away a little bit more liberated” from her own self.

“And I think that in the process of doing this film, it allowed me on a personal level to look at those areas of judgment that I was holding against myself, where I was pushing and holding myself to those standards that are not necessarily realistic versus the beauty of focusing and celebrating all that I am versus focusing on all that I’m not,” Demi shared. 

In 2019, Demi was quoted as saying in an interview for Corporate Animals, where she played an egotistic CEO, about how she picks her roles:

“I do want to be careful not to play into a cliché, which is that all older women are evil, bitter villains, which is one of the next kinds of things that need to be overcome. We want romance, too! We want all those things!”

With her impactful performance in The Substance, Hollywood just might give her more roles of substance — and romance, too. – Rappler.com