Demi Moore

THE FIRST-TIME OSCAR NOMINEE IS RIDING HIGH AFTER A ROLLER-COASTER RUN IN THE SPOTLIGHT

- Jennie Noonan

Accepting her Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy for her comeback role in body horror film The Substance, Demi Moore reflected on her career. “I’ve been acting for 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” she said, recalling how three decades earlier a producer had told her she was a “popcorn actress” that would never be critically acclaimed. “That corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it. Maybe I was complete.” After reading the script for The Substance, she said, “The universe told me that, ‘You’re not done.’”

Having been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for the role, Moore is hitting her professional stride at 62, after first getting her big break just before her 19th birthday when she was cast on soap opera General Hospital. She then played Michael Caine’s daughter in Blame it on Rio (1984) and, with her role in St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), joined a crew of then rising young stars – including Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe and Ally Sheedy – dubbed by the press as the Brat Pack. “Nobody wanted to be called a brat. It wasn’t trendy or popular,” she recalled to Vanity Fair in September. “It felt like it diminished us, or that we were less serious. I think that it spurred me to keep moving forward and just not be attached to it.”