Demi Moore has lived in the house since 2005. “It’s been a funny place,” she says. “It was a home for three kids, and now it’s just me and my pack of silly dogs.”
It’s hard to think of Moore as a grandmother living alone, but she’s currently making what some might call the best work of her career: Her latest, “The Substance,” tells the story of an aging TV star who discovers a mysterious pill that makes her young and perfect, but at a steep price.
“I put so much pressure on myself,” she said of the value she placed on her attractiveness in the past, “and I had experiences where I was told to lose weight. And as embarrassing and humiliating as all of that may have been, that’s what I did to myself.”
To watch the trailer for “The Substance,” click on the video player below.
For example, while shooting the 1993 film “Indecent Proportions,” she biked every day from her home in Malibu to Paramount Studios in Hollywood, a distance of about 30 miles each way.
She was breastfeeding her baby at the time, saying, “I think he was about five or six months old while we were shooting. So I’d nurse him through the night, get up in the dark with a sweatshirt and a headlamp on, and bike to Paramount, where we were shooting, and then we’d shoot a typical 12-hour day, and then start all over again. It’s so crazy, so ridiculous, just thinking about what I did to my body.”
But she says that she thought that was what was expected of her at the time. “Yeah, but I look back and I’m like, ‘Was it really that important?’ Probably not! But at the time, I thought that was all that mattered.”
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Moore has been in the spotlight since the ’80s, a talented and then-troubled Hollywood star. “Brat Pack” While she shone on screen in films like St. Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night, off it, she struggled with self-esteem. “I have so much compassion for what a scared little girl I was, even though I never let anyone know that,” she says. “And if I could go back in time, I’d hug her and say, ‘It’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK.'”
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Moore went on to become the highest-paid woman in the film industry, and other women rose to the top: When she made a record $12.5 million for the 1996 film “Strip Tease,” other women in Hollywood demanded and got bigger salaries.
She also challenged notions of whether a 40-year-old woman should wear a bikini and how long a woman’s hair should be at a certain age, after shaving her head in the 1997 film “G.I. Jane.”
Now, at 61, her hair reaches down to her waist. “I think after I shaved my head, I started growing it out with the idea that I could have long hair if I wanted,” Moore says. “Who said it was bad? I heard it so many times. If I didn’t like the way I looked, I’d cut it.”
And in “The Substance,” she again asks, “Why do we think this way?”
In one scene, her character goes out on a date, looks in the mirror, applies her makeup, then purposely removes it. She says the scene was difficult to film. “Emotionally, it’s something I think a lot of us have been through, where you try to make something better, but you end up making it worse,” she says. “For me, it was one of the most heartbreaking moments in the entire film. We did at least 15 takes every time, so by the end, my face was in pain.”
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What happens to her after a day like that? “I just collapse. I just fall into bed!” she laughs.
“For yourself, when you look in the mirror today, what do you think?” Smith asked.
“Well, it fluctuates,” Moore says. “Some days I look at myself and I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty good.’ And other days I find myself over-focusing and over-analysing what I don’t like about myself. The difference is that now I have control over myself. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t like this loose skin.’ But that’s reality, so I’m going to try my best with reality instead of chasing something that’s not real.”
“Looking back, can you give us an example of something that you were pursuing that fell away?” Smith asked.
“Before, I thought my face was like, oh, so plump, no angles, nothing. But now, yeah, but it feels loose! I wouldn’t mind some of that plumpness back in the right places!”
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Moore has three adult children with ex-husband Bruce Willis. Have dementiaShe said she tries to visit him every week when she’s in town, “and the key is to meet him where he is, rather than obsessing over who he was or what he was like, because, again, that just leaves you with a sense of loss and you can’t just live in the present and meet him where he is and find joy and love in all that he is.”
Demi Moore seems to have found peace with the things outside of her control, the wisdom and freedom that comes naturally, if you’re lucky, in a long and interesting life.
“I think I’m in a different place in my life than I’ve ever been,” she said. “I’m the most independent I’ve ever been. My kids are grown. I’m the most independent I’ve ever been. So I’m really trying to focus on the things that bring me joy. I don’t like to predict and say, ‘This is where I want to be,’ because I don’t know. I don’t know where I’ll be, but I do know that this is an opportunity for me to have a really good time!”
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Story produced by Jon D’Amelio. Edited by Lauren Barnero.
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