Demi Moore: “I gave too much importance to my thinness, I thought I would have more value that way” | Culture

His little dog, a tiny chihuahua turned social media star, comes up to sniff the visitor. “It’s called Pilaf,” says Demi Moore (Roswell, New Mexico, 61 years old), sitting in an armchair in a suite hotel in London, with four publicists lined up behind her like an army. The pet, looking somewhat anemic, requests a pet. Did you like us? “I must have felt that I had to offer you something that you needed,” responds the actress, aware of her interlocutor’s nerves: it is not every day, nor every year, that one sits down for half an hour with a real star. After years of downtime, the time has come for his triumphant return with The substancewhich premieres next Friday, October 11.

Directed by French director Coralie Fargeat, the film is a moral tale that mixes body horrora horror subgenre in which the body undergoes grotesque transformations, and satire on the sexism of a society obsessed with perfect bodies and the cult of Ozempic. Moore is Elisabeth Sparkle, an Oscar winner recycled into a TV show host. fitness, until it is fired for being “too old.” The solution: undergo an experimental and clandestine treatment that turns her into a young woman in her early twenties, with firm buttocks and perfect breasts, played by Margaret Qualley. Moore’s return, comparable to that of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction or Mickey Rourke in The fighteradd a layer goal to the story: she was also discarded by Hollywood and knows what self-destruction is, as she described in an amazing autobiography, InsideOut. my story (Roca), published in 2019.

Many performers would flee in terror from this material. This was not his case, although he admits that the project imposed itself on him when he read the script. “It was a very hard shoot. There were aspects that scared me, because the film left me in a vulnerable position, but I tend to look for projects that require a certain courage, that involve a challenge,” he admits with his characteristic raspy voice. For example, a fierce look at his physique and his aging, with several sequences of full nudity that are distinguished by a rawness unusual in commercial cinema.

Her Elisabeth could be a sign of the times, a symbol of our obsession with body image. “I don’t think it represents our entire culture, but it does convey some truths. That’s why it resonates with the viewer,” says Moore. In women, the main victims of this fascism of the body, but also in many men. “I’m glad you say it, because it’s true: the film talks about a fragility that all human beings share. “Women have been treated more harshly, until now…” Do you trust that the situation will improve for them? “It depends on the direction things take. The only constant in life is change. I want to be part of that change, instead of always perpetuating the same ideas,” he says.

The substance includes nods to the films of Brian de Palma and David Cronenberg, but it is also worth seeing in it a hallucinatory and bloody adaptation of Eve naked either twilight of the godsfilms that remind us that ageism has always existed in Hollywood. “And not just in Hollywood. Cinema is a more exaggerated world, because the body is our working instrument and there are pressures regarding our appearance. The question is how you deal with it. “What importance do you want to give it?”

After reigning in Hollywood, she was removed in record time. “I don’t feel punished, but I did things that people weren’t prepared for,” Moore says. “Anyone who dares to be a pioneer must be ready for criticism”

Moore experienced it firsthand in his early days, at a time when “the standards of physical perfection, whatever that means, were more rigid.” “I was asked to lose weight several times,” he admits. “It was a humiliating experience, but the underlying problem was the opinion I had of myself. I gave too much importance to my thinness. I believed that this way I would be considered better and more valuable. Only by freeing myself from those perceptions did I find joy. As humans, our journey in life is to learn to love ourselves, to love all parts of ourselves.”

The substance It actually talks about the abuse we inflict on our bodies. Moore agrees: “That is, to me, the real issue: the violence we do to our physicality, how we talk to ourselves in our heads.” For her, the pressure of the industry generated anxiety and addictions, being a young actress “without guidance or anchorage, without a sense of value”, raised by an alcoholic and bipolar mother who ended up posing naked in the international press when Moore was in the crest of the wave Signed as a model for the Elite agency and founding member of the Brat Pack with the youth film St. Elmo, meeting pointended up being an impossible mix of sex symbols and next door neighbor. In the nineties, she achieved something as difficult as embodying the modern woman, capturing the spirit of the time. He conquered everything and lost it in record time. He descended into hell and then returned.

How do you explain this rapid fall from grace, with few precedents in recent cinema? A hypothesis: a constant in his career during the eighties and nineties, at the pinnacle of his glory, were projects with high sexual content: after the global success of Ghostrolled An indecent proposition, Harassment, Striptease and Lieutenant O’Neillall of them very graphic and where the real protagonist was her body. “If I went back in time, one of the constants would be that I have always been intrigued by the provocative. Not necessarily in the sexual sense, but what provokes thought and raises questions,” Moore maintains. They were also morally provocative, a thesis that makes her agree: their films asked what was right and wrong at a time of great changes in sexual politics.

It is no coincidence that another of her nineties roles was Hester, the anti-heroine of The scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom Harold Bloom called the “American Eve.” “A woman judged and punished for loving,” says Moore. Did she feel sanctioned for representing sexuality in a still-puritanical America? “I don’t feel like I was punished, but I did things that were challenging and people may not have been prepared to deal with them,” Moore responds. “For example, when I became the highest-paid actress, which not only changed things for me, but for all women.”

Talk about your annus horribilisthe turning point of his career: in 1996, he earned 12 million dollars for filming Stripteasea historical record for an actress in American cinema. It could have been a cause for celebration in the interest of equal pay. It was quite the opposite: they treated her like a diva and greedy (Gimme Moorea play on words with “give me more,” was her nickname at the time), while her then husband, Bruce Willis, earned 20 million without anyone batting an eyelid. “I don’t think I was conscious, but they didn’t want to allow me that victory. “Anyone who dares to be a pioneer must be ready to face negativity or criticism,” he resigns. “It was my turn, but it could have been someone else. I don’t see it as something negative or bad. It is what it is”. In reality, Moore sees all the disasters in his life and career as opportunities that allowed him to “improve,” as he expresses in the conversation through endless phrases behind which there seem to be many hours of therapy.

Before the pandemic, it was considered leaving everything. Now he doesn’t contemplate it: he wants to see what grows from the seeds he has just planted and continue digging into his wounds to get to know himself a little better. “The only way out is inward,” read the enigmatic last sentence of his book. In the sequel to Charlie’s Angelsin which she played a juicy villain role while her career slowed down, she said goodbye with an even more categorical one, while a tear slid down her cheek, tracing a perfect straight line. “I was never good,” she said. “I was the best.”