The Woman Of Many Faces

In her next three films, Julianne Moore plays five different roles. For this shoot, we asked her to play six more

- Leigh Belz Ray

Julianne Moore is on vacation. And when she greets me outside her Montauk, N.Y., house, she’s the epitome of weekend chic in a white T and denim cutoffs. Two weeks after the shoot for this piece— we’d asked the Academy Award winner to portray six beauty archetypes—the only character Moore is playing is herself: blissfully unguarded. Outside her front door is a towel covered with a family’s worth of sandy shoes,including her own black-on-blackBirkenstocks.She’s mid way through preparing tea and breakfast for her daughter, Liv, 15, who’s home sick from her summer camp counselor job. It’s early, so son Cal, 19, is still sleeping and husband Bart Freundlich is out with their two dogs, Cherry and Milly. The Moore-Freundlich cottage, originally a two-room fisherman’s shack built in the ’40s that’s been gently teased out to a small three-bedroom space, is totally quiet.

She delivers Liv her breakfast and asks me what we should do first: interview or paddleboard? She paddle boards pretty regularly when she’s in Montauk; I’ve done it never. But she volunteered to take me out on the water behind her house. And when Julianne Moore offers you something, you say yes. You just do.

She grabs some aviators and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and we head through her backyard to the 181-acre Fort Pond, whose subtle murkiness is further testament to Moore’s game nature. She picks what she deems the most stable long board for me and a sportier purple model for herself, handling the bulky boards with ease despite her petite frame.