She was the highest-paid actress in the world but she finished high school in inconsequential films. Her latest film, including nudity, has returned her to stardom.
It was a resurgence that almost no one was counting on at this point. But Demi Moore has shown, at 61 years old, that she still has gas left in her tank. Dennis Quaid, her co-star in The Substancethe film that marked her triumphant return to the Cannes festival, has called it an “incredible third act” for the actress who was everything in the 90s: the highest paid performer in the world and one of the most revered inside of the star system Hollywood, with titles like An indecent proposal, Some good men, Striptease either Ghost.
More than 25 years had passed since its last major premiere -Lieutenant O’Neil in 1997 – when Coralie Fargeat, the French director, thought of her to get into the shoes of Elizabeth Sparkle, an actress shaken by the classic abandonment of the system when the years begin to show themselves. Her crisis pushes her to try a clandestine substance that offers you a better version of yourself, a revolutionary product that creates a more attractive and perfected alter ego, and from there a body horror movie which was very popular in Cannes. The ovation for Moore and the rest of the cast, made up of Quaid, Margaret Qualley – who plays the improved version of the actress -, and Gore Adams, among others, lasted 11 minutes, and the film is a candidate for the Palme d’Or at the festival.
Opportunities like this don’t arise every day. Moore, who had been condemned to supporting roles in inconsequential films for years, knows it. It was the opportunity to “get out of my comfort zone, to do something that would make me a better person and a better actress,” as he explained at the press conference in Cannes after the screening of the film. For the New Mexico actress, Fargeat’s film deals with “many issues that we all face, seeking validation and a sense of belonging. It takes us to extremes and allows us to delve into them in a unique way.”
The extreme for her, in this case, has been having to face several frontal nude scenes at 61 years old, with a level of “vulnerability and crudeness” that entailed “a lot of sensitivity” on their part and “a lot of conversation about what we were trying to accomplish.” That and the physical transformation that her character goes through as the enhanced version of her displaces and condemns her to a very dark place.
The challenge comes to her at an optimal time, having left behind the personal crises that turned her into tabloid bait for years. There was a time, coinciding with the turn of the century, when there was more talk about her marital problems with Bruce Willis than about her work. It was the beginning of a decline that increased over the years and her subsequent relationship with Ashton Kutcher, an actor 15 years her junior. In between there was an abortion while six months pregnant, multiple accusations of infidelity and admissions to rehabilitation centers for her addiction to opiates and her destructive lifestyle, including an eating disorder that caused her to lose weight drastically. Moore hit rock bottom in 2012 when she collapsed at her Los Angeles home and suffered seizures while being admitted to a hospital.
Now it seems to have turned the page. It is clearly reflected in her appearance, radiant among the photographers who immortalized her on the Cannes red carpet. She has been clear for years that her priority is her personal relationships and not her film career. Perhaps that is why the air of confidence that she gives off, perceptible in her gesture and her speech. The opinions of third parties have stopped having so much weight in her life. “What does it matter what other people think?” he said in a meeting with Gwyneth Paltrow and Arianna Huffington in 2019. “Nothing can be that bad, no matter what they say.”
BRUCE WILLIS
Last year Moore turned to her ex-husband, Bruce Willis, after learning that she suffers from dementia. Already during the pandemic they shared a house in Hailey, Idaho, as part of the quarantine with her three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. The illness has brought them even closer together, even with Willis’ wife, the British model Emma Heming, 45 years old, who had two children with the protagonist of The jungle of crystal. Nobody knows how much time the 69-year-old legend may have left and the goal is to spend as much time as possible with his family.
It’s a new turn in a remarkable life journey that began in Hollywood in 1982 with an American soap opera, General Hospital, and that he made his way until he found what was, that year, the highest grossing film, Ghost. Then came her great successes in the 90s and a contract as historic as it was multimillion-dollar for a woman at the time: 12.5 million dollars to be made. Striptease in 1996.
It was its high point, although critics destroyed Andrew Bergman’s film for not being funny, dramatic or sexy enough to constitute a worthy entertainment, in the words of historian and critic Leonard Maltin. His following works marked the same descending line which preceded the professional and personal decline from which it has taken a few years to recover.The Substance It seems proof that the brilliance of its star still endures.
