Page 179 - Marie Claire Australia (January 2020)

LIFE STORIES
Early in 1987 she met actor Bruce
Willis, then 31, at a film screening in
LA. Willis had a reputation for being
a womaniser who loved to drink, but
meeting 24-year-old Moore quickly
put paid to both pastimes. “Most men,
I found, played games, but he was
straight about who he was,” she said.
In November that same year, the
couple flew to Las Vegas to watch a
boxing match and ended up marrying
in their suite at the Golden Nugget
hotel. “The whole trip we joked about
getting married,” she later recalled.
“Finally, he said, ‘Well, what do you
think?’ I panicked and just said, ‘OK’.
But first I went and fixed my hair.”
Their first daughter, Rumer, was
born in August 1988, and Moore
returned to work a year later to play
Patrick Swayze’s grieving girlfriend
in Ghost. Made on a shoestring budget
of US $22 million, it was released in
July 1990 and eventually became the
highest-grossing film of the year,
earning more than US $505 million
worldwide. Her next couple of films
failed to be as successful, but Moore
was making ripples in other ways. In
1991, she caused shock waves when she
appeared naked on the cover of Vanity
Fair while seven months pregnant with
her second daughter, Scout. Public
opinion was split on the appropriateness
of the image, but Moore didn’t care.
“While you’re pregnant, you’re made
to feel not beautiful or sexually viable,”
she said. “You’re either sexy or you’re
a mother. I didn’t want to have to
choose, so I challenged that.”
Moore was also savvy about
picking film roles that were cultural
conversation starters. In Indecent
Proposal she played a wife who was
offered a million dollars to sleep with
a stranger, sparking debate about the
moral ramifications. Disclosure saw her
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GETTY IMAGES. Tallulah, was born in 1994, she and
portray a boss sexually harassing her
older male employee (Michael Douglas).
By the time Moore’s third daughter,
Willis were living in the town of Hailey
in Idaho to escape media scrutiny. Yet
their departure from LA in no way
impacted their careers. In 1996,
“YOU’RE EITHER SEXY
OR YOU’RE A MOTHER.
I DIDN’T WANT TO
HAVE TO CHOOSE, SO
I CHALLENGED THAT”
– Demi Moore
Moore became the highest-paid
actress in history when she received
US $12.1 million to play a single-mum-
turned-stripper in the satirical thriller
Striptease. Sadly, the film bombed and
her next major release, 1997’s G.I. Jane,
performed just as poorly.
A year later, Moore and Willis
separated, saying their marriage had
suffered from too much time spent
apart on film sets. The divorce was
finalised in 2000, and she reportedly
received a payout of US $86.7 million.
In 2003, the then-40-year-old made a
stunning comeback in Charlie’s
Angels: Full Throttle. Although she’d
worked hard on her body for
Striptease and G.I. Jane, images of her
on set looking lean in a bikini sparked
plastic surgery rumours. Moore later
described the reports that she’d spent
US $249,000 on a knee lift, breast
augmentation and liposuction as
“irritating” and “not true”. “The
culmination for me was when there
were multiple reports I had my knees
done,” she said. “I thought,
‘Wow, should I have been
worried about my knees?’”
Firmly back in the
spotlight, that same year
Moore began dating
25-year-old actor Ashton
Kutcher. They shrugged off
question marks over their
15-year age gap to marry in
September 2005. “I could
just go back in time and
experience what it was like
been able to experience
to be young – with him –
much more so than I’d ever
I THOUGHT
when I was actually in my
OF [MY
20s,” Moore wrote of their
RAPE] AS
relationship, also revealing
SOMETHING
that when Kutcher
I CAUSED”
“expressed his fantasy of
FROM FAR LEFT
Demi Moore as
naval intelligence
officer Jordan
O’Neill in 1997
action flick
G.I. Jane;
Tallulah, Bruce
and Rumer Willis
with Ashton
Kutcher and
Moore in 2007.
bringing a third person into our bed,
I didn’t say no. I wanted to show him
how great and fun I could be.”
But behind her bright facade, Moore
was fading. She suffered a miscarriage
and began drinking again, ending her
nearly 20-year run of sobriety. Then, six
years into the marriage, reports surfaced
that Kutcher had slept with another
woman on their wedding anniversary.
In November 2011, Moore, 49,
announced she was leaving Kutcher.
The divorce took its toll: in 2012 the
actress collapsed at her home in LA
and was taken to hospital, after
which it was claimed she had been
taking nitrous oxide, otherwise
known as laughing gas. Her gaunt
appearance generated accusations
that she was anorexic. She eventually
sought what her publicist described
as “professional assistance” at a Utah
treatment centre to alleviate the
stress she’d been under.
Moore’s career took a back seat
during this troubled period in
her private life, but in 2017 she
triumphantly returned to the small
screen to guest star in Empire. Oscar
nominee Taraji P Henson said she
loved working with her, describing the
actress as “funny and down to earth”.
It was a glowing endorsement for Moore
after years in the wilderness.
Since then, she has
voiced an animated series
for children called Animals
and appeared in the
comedy-horror Corporate
Animals, which premiered
at Sundance Film Festival
in January 2019. She will
next be seen in the TV
adaptation of Aldous
Huxley’s 1932 dystopian
novel, Brave New World.
But Moore is pragmatic
“FOR DECADES days, saying her outlook
about where her career
ranks in importance these
changed after her health
“took me down” in 2012.
“My relationships are more
important,” she said. “And
what I do comes second.”
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