JULIANNE FULL HEART, EMPTY NEST

JULIANNE MOORE REFLECTS ON RAISING INDEPENDENT KIDS, MAKING HER MARRIAGE THRIVE AND HER FOUR DECADES IN HOLLYWOOD: 'I HAVE A REAL SENSE OF GRATITUDE'

-  BENJAMIN VANHOOSE

Julianne Moore leans in and smiles, ready to tell an amusing truth about being an empty nester. “Here’s something that parents do. It’s crazy,” says Moore, who shares children Caleb, 25, and Liv, 20, with her husband, director Bart Freundlich. After Liv left for college a couple of years ago, Moore was missing their mother-daughter quality time: catching up on the events of their days, eating potato chips and watching The Bachelor or other reality TV. “Suddenly Bart and I are in this empty house,” she continues. “We have one little old dog that’s very easy to take everywhere. And what do we do? We get a puppy.” Now their big, adorable pit bull mix, Hope, keeps the couple (and their 13-year-old Chihuahua, Milly) tethered to their home at a time when they should have more freedom. Jokes Moore: “We can’t go anywhere!”

When it comes to her career, though, Moore is always thinking several steps ahead. The actress—who got her start playing good and evil twins on As the World Turns in the 1980s before segueing into acclaimed movies—prepares meticulously to be able to inhabit characters from a porn star (Boogie Nights) to a depressed 1950s housewife (The Hours) to a woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s (Still Alice, for which she won an Oscar in 2015). Even growing up, the daughter of Peter, an Army officer, and Anne, a psychiatric social worker, was a conscientious kid who studied.