moore! moore! moore!

LONG A BEAUTY ICON, DEMI MOORE DELIVERED THE PERFORMANCE OF HER CAREER IN THE SUBSTANCE-AND PROVED SHE'S NEVER BEEN MORE COMFORTABLE IN HER OWN SKIN

- by Julie Jordan

Demi Moore’s Oscar night wasn’t the fairy-tale ending many had predicted for the star, the season’s favorite to win best actress. But she greeted the morning after in peace and pajamas. “I think Iwas in them all day,” she says, laughing. “I was just so happy to kind of sleep in, knowing I had nowhere to be. It was just a beautiful, easy day.”

At 62, Moore has earned her resilience, drawing from a life filled with trials and triumphs—from a troubled childhood and marital ups and downs to trailblazing roles and the joy of being a mom to her three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, whom she shares with ex Bruce Willis. “Giving birth is one of the only times that you can 100 percent know that pain is bringing you a gift,” she says. “And when you can apply that to other things, you start to see that that isa truth of all things that are difficult.”

With her intense role as an aging star fitness instructor desperate for youth in the horror hit The Substance, Moore showcased her long-underrated acting chops—and her unparalleled ability to shape Hollywood's narratives around power and beauty. (Remember her naked and pregnant on that 1991 Vanity Fair cover? Or doing one-arm push-ups in G.I. Jane?) The accolades—including her first Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards—have given the single Moore, who’s now filming season 2 of the Paramount+ hit Landman, an emboldened sense of who she has become. “I have a greater appreciation for all that my body has been through that brought me to now,” she says of aging in Hollywood. “It doesn’t mean that sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t go, ‘Oh God, I look old,’ or ‘Oh, my face is falling’—I do. But I can accept that that’s where Tmat today, and I know the difference today is that it doesn’t define my value or who l am.”