Demi Moore with her dog Pilaf at the Cannes Film Festival Photo: Andrea Alexandru/Invision
A quarter of a century since she last since she was making a major impact on screen, Demi Moore might have remained faded. But she had other ideas. In Substance, she's back in the spotlight with a savage, self-destructive commentary on her relationship with fame.
Moore never did anything to prepare us for this shocking body horror, The Unsuccessful Cannes sensation is both moving and staggeringly terrible — makes you rethink her entire career.
To achieve this comeback, Moore begins to satirize what she had to face as one of the most bankable A-listers of the early 1990s: impossible beauty standards, limited shelf life, the suspicious dominance of the casting couch. In the ugly light of the media that made her infamous and then gave her nicknames, it is not surprising that she suddenly went into hiding.
After gracing every billboard in various stages of undress to promote her films, the transition was almost Icarus-like—and it came so suddenly once Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane, the latest in a string of disastrous flops, was released in the summer of 1997.
What since then? Moore made a conscious decision to shy away from fame, give or take, playing the villain in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003). Between marriages, she started a family (with Bruce Willis, then with Ashton Kutcher); went viral on Twitter for his non-profit anti-child trafficking activism; made a surprise appearance at Princess Eugenie's wedding in 2018; and continued to appear in a varied assortment of films united only by their meager success.
The teen comedy-drama «LOL» (2012), in which she played Miley Cyrus's mother, actually turned out to be one of the highest grossers, although it turned out to be a real bomb. Name just one of the 20 films Moore has technically released in the last 20 years and you're doing pretty well.
Although she has spoken extensively about her desire to leave, her reasons are symbolic of how harshly the industry has always treated its female sex symbols. If you wrote a book about what happens when they hit 40, she could be the cover girl.
Indeed, this is the whole point of The Substance. Moore impresses as Elizabeth Sparkle, a once celebrated star (she even won an Oscar, unlike the never-nominated woman playing her) who is cruelly put out to pasture, deemed too old to continue hosting a dance workout show (very similar to those Jane Fonda performed in the 1980s).
Demi Moore in Substance Photo: Universal Studios
Desperate to restart her career, she turns to a mysterious elixir one last time seen in the 1992 black comedy Death Becomes Her (in which, oddly enough, Willis played the lead role). She finds herself at the mercy of a self-serving clone (played by Margaret Qualley) who is content to see the eldest Elizabeth dry up.
In the assertive ambition of this Qualley figure, with her FX-enhanced breasts, we should learn something from the young Demi, who completely matches. Perhaps, looking back, we relate to her more sympathetically.
A year after her breakout role in Phantom, the biggest hit of 1990, made her the industry's most in-demand actress, she posed for Vanity Fair's iconic More Demi Moore cover with Annie Leibovitz while seven months pregnant. . with daughter Scout. She was wearing nothing but her diamond engagement ring; one hand covered her breasts, the other pressed the bump.
Nobody remembers the film she was promoting (The Butcher's Wife), but this cover, which remains one of Leibovitz's most famous pictures, caused quite a stir. It sparked controversy at the time about pregnancy fetishism/exploitation, but much of the criticism, predictably, was directed at Moore herself for being the one to get naked.
She could only respond to such criticism with resentful bewilderment. It was also intended as a juicy advertisement for her box office heyday, short as it may have been: after Phantom, the only major films in the plus column would be A Few Good Men (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993) and Disclosure (1994).
The last two were arguably modern erotic thrillers, largely based on her sex appeal. But all three films had male stars above her—the kind of Hollywood glass ceiling that Moore was laudably determined to break.
She didn't get much recognition for it back then. “What's the point of Demi Moore?” began the New Yorker's Anthony Lane in his review of her next film, The Scarlet Letter (1995), having already made a cruel quip in his article on Indecent Proposal: «How Much Would You Pay?» ? for an evening with thoughts of Demi Moore?
The feeling of desperation over rising bills sent Moore into a tailspin. The Scarlet Letter was her nadir, a soft bodice that critics tore at the seams, treating its heroine Hawthorne as little more than a country whore. Another double flop followed in 1996: The Juror and Striptease, for which she jointly won the Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress.
These Razzie voters have really been raving about Moore throughout this period — she's doing great in The Jury! – but they were also leaders of an annoying public. In interviews, she could seem just as abrasive, without the warm openness of Julia Roberts. She turned down While You Were Sleeping (1995) because the money wasn't enough, giving her next choice Sandra Bullock an advantage.
Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis and their family at the premiere of the film «Rabbit House» in 2008. Photo: Getty
Moore and Willis, with whom she remained married until 2000, were already in full swing, living with their children on a ranch in the small town of Hailey, Idaho. They invested so lavishly in the place—buying up a diner, a club, eventually an airstrip, and filling a restored Victorian mansion with Moore's collection of antique dolls—that people began calling it «Planet Haleywood.»
The pinnacle was Moore's highly publicized $12.5 million salary for Striptease, making her the highest-paid actress in Hollywood at the time. The film, a lackluster crime comedy about lap dances, was a poor choice for this climax.
And again she was naked on the posters. Only ticket buyers will be able to see the breast augmentation she had done that year. The striptease was a big hit, and the tabloids nicknamed her «Gimme Moore.»
The gossip became more fierce the less she wore. Yes, she's gorgeous and not shy about on-screen sex, but can she act? When Moore shaved her hair off for G.I. Jane, who did Letterman's one-arm push-ups and bravely threw herself into a difficult combat role, expected approval, but she didn't get any.
She'd blame it on the hangover from a payday striptease. “In some ways, Striptease was a movie where women felt betrayed by me,” she suggested in 2009. Jane was a film that made men feel betrayed by me. The focus was on that salary.»
From her 2019 memoir, Inside Out, we know of many other issues Moore struggled with, including chronic addiction to alcohol and cocaine; she also spoke of her «rape and devastating betrayal» at age 15, when her mother Virginia (who died in 1998) received $500 from a landlord who attacked her at home.
A childhood surrounded by drunkenness took its toll. Moore entered rehab as a rising star in 1985 after Joel Schumacher threatened to fire her for being high on the set of his Band of Brothers melodrama St. Elmo's Fire.
She stayed sober for 20 years and fell off the wagon only after marrying Kutcher, a dim-witted jock whom she began dating in 2003. Kutcher was 25 when they met; Moore was 40 and still raising children with Willis, who cheerfully attended the couple's Beverly Hills wedding in 2005.
While the trio tried valiantly to act like a modern family, the ridicule of the red-shirted Cougars took on a humiliating edge . Moore admitted that her new marriage made her feel codependent, making her addicted again. (She and Kutcher divorced in 2013.)
After all this time, what's so applauding about «The Thing»—much like «The Wrestler» was for Mickey Rourke or «Birdman» was for Michael Keaton—is how it works for Moore, like a long, hard look in the mirror. This is a discovery for us. In the best three or four scenes, we see the 61-year-old actress sizing up her reflection—often completely naked.
Despite her phenomenal appearance, she is her own harshest critic — and she has many enemies who are plotting to throw her into the trash heap. Writer-director Coralie Farjat may not be planning any redemption for Elizabeth (far, far from it), but the main goal is to make you feel something for Demi Moore that you've never felt before. This is her triumph.
When she was striving to become the hottest star in the firmament, there was something about Moore's strong-willed determination that kept us out. The effort seemed steely and noticeable. With age comes vulnerability; courage too. By dropping her defenses and pretending to be afraid, she becomes surprisingly empathetic for the first time since “Ghost” and deserves our affection.
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