Demi Moore continued her winning streak over the weekend when she picked up Best Actress at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday. I’ve only encountered people who absolutely loved The Substance, or positively loathed it, with no middle ground. For my part, I thought the acting from the leads was excellent — Demi, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid, too. I didn’t know he had it in him to be that camp! (Does that mean he’s at risk of MAGA rescinding his membership?) In her “popcorn actress” speech at the Golden Globes, Demi kind of perfectly articulated what this career moment is for her: getting recognition, validation, and respect for her art (an extension of herself), after being put in a box to the point where she believed that’s where she belonged. Well, Demi just took part in Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast, where she dove even deeper into the craft she brought to this role:
“This whole journey has just been a shock and awe,” she says with humility and amusement. “I had no expectations, so everything has been a surprise, and honestly, that’s a really beautiful place to be sitting in.”
At 62, Moore has just earned her first Academy Award nomination for best actress, a recognition that was both unexpected and long overdue. Her performance in Coralie Fargeat’s body horror thriller “The Substance” is raw, fearless and, at times, deeply unsettling. The film, which satirized Hollywood’s obsession with youth and beauty, sees Moore’s character undergo a grotesque transformation after consuming a mysterious product.
…But it’s a moment in front of the mirror where she methodically smears lipstick across her face in a moment of profound self-destruction that is her most haunting moment. “It was really tough,” she admits. “Coralie likes to do a lot of takes — we didn’t do fewer than 15 in each segment. But I knew that this was such a pivotal moment in the film. It’s the beginning of the real violence against oneself.” She pauses. “It’s also the ‘F–k it!’ moment. You want her to be happy, and she’s so close.”
The role required Moore to go deep — deeper than ever before. “I realized I didn’t have the benefit of feeding off other actors in many of these scenes,” she explains. “So I had to create a dialogue with myself. I went through every beat, every moment so that when I got there, I could just let it go.”
If there were doubts about her ability to carry a film of this magnitude, Moore never let them in. “I knew the movie was ambitious, but I also knew that Coralie had something to say — and she wasn’t just taking cheap shots at Hollywood. The story had substance,” she says, relishing the unintentional pun.
…But what’s more remarkable is the shift that Moore is witnessing and leading in Hollywood. “We’ve all heard the narrative — women of a certain age in Hollywood are discarded, overlooked,” she says. “But look at what’s happening now. There’s interest in our stories. There’s room for us. And that’s exciting.”
She reflects on the moment she felt her career might have reached its natural end. “I had hit a low point where I didn’t feel like I was expanding like I wasn’t being challenged,” she admits. “And I thought, maybe the universe is telling me I need to do something else. But then ‘The Substance’ came along, and I thought, ‘Okay, this I can dive into. This is something I can bring all of myself to.’”
Demi is running her campaign so well. I love hearing her break down the preparation she did for the mirror scene, and I bet that’s the kind of thing Oscar voters will also be into. And it’s such a good point, that she is alone in that scene, so she didn’t have anyone else to play off of or react to. She had to create it all herself, which in some ways is harder. In fact, so much of The Substance is Demi on her own, in that apartment. Which brings me to something that I feel has been criminally left out of most Substance conversations: what is the floorplan of that pad?! Seriously, between the endless, curving hallway of catastrophe, to the large (yet more utilitarian than luxurious) bathroom, the layout of that place was the biggest mystery of the entire film, to me.
Anyway, the Variety piece is a great read. The absence of her dog Pilaf is noted (with great disappointment) by the interviewer, and Demi also gives a touching update that she visits ex-husband Bruce Willis and his family weekly, “because that’s what you do for the people you love.”
photos credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon/