Demi Moore names the most underrated movies of her career: “It hit me really hard”
The way you think about Demi Moore probably has a lot to do with the decade in which you started watching movies. If you were growing up in the 1980s, you might have known her as one of the members of Hollywood’s Brat Pack, a group of teenage stars who appeared in John Hughes’ spate of high school-set dramas like St Elmo’s Fire, Pretty in Pink, and The Breakfast Club.
If you were paying attention to box office marquees in the ‘90s, you probably think of her as one of Hollywood’s most famous leading ladies, the ceramicist who made you sob in the highest-grossing movie of 1990, Ghost. Or maybe you were more of a fan of the steamy neo-noir Indecent Proposal or the definitive courtroom drama A Few Good Men.
For those who grew up in the 2000s, though, Moore is probably known more for her unlikely, tabloid-friendly marriage to Ashton Kutcher than for her movies, which became fewer and farther between at the turn of the millennium.
But Moore never quit the business entirely, and nor should she be defined by those early crowd-pleasing hits. Far from being a mainstream Hollywood star whose career slowed with the decades, Moore has consistently sought out unusual projects, which makes her current resurrection as a box office smash in Coralie Fargeat’s body horror movie The Substance far less of a surprise than some have made it out to be.
In 1996, for example, she starred in two risky movies – Striptease, in which she played an exotic dancer, and Ridley Scott’s G.I. Jane, in which she played a soldier in the US Navy who is chosen for a special combat unit akin to the Navy SEALs. Although many A-list female actors have played exotic dancers and members of the military in the years since the combination in the mid-90s proved to be more than the movie-going public could handle.
In an interview with Variety earlier this year, Moore looked back on her lengthy career and remembered her struggle to be taken seriously as an actor. She even revealed that one producer referred to her as a “popcorn actress”, suggesting that she was only good for blockbusters and couldn’t handle more dramatic roles. But as Moore pointed out, that perception was more about a persona that had been projected onto her than actual track record.
“If I really look at ‘G.I. Jane,’ there was a faction of people out to shut that movie down before it even opened,” she said. “I did ‘Striptease’ and ‘G.I. Jane’ back to back. If anything in this industry has ever been stacked against me, it was having those two films come out at the same time and becoming the highest-paid actress on top of that. That moment was so powerful for me because it wasn’t just about me; it was about changing the playing field for all women. But because I was portraying a stripper, I betrayed women. And because I played a soldier, I betrayed men”.
She added: “The narrative quickly became ‘Well, she’s only getting paid that number because she’s playing a stripper.’ It hit me really hard. But at the same time, I understood that anybody who steps out first is going to take the hit. That goes for anybody challenging the status quo.”
Indeed, in the decades since, movies such as 2019’s Hustlers and even Mike Nichols’ Closer have shown that Hollywood’s top stars can play strippers and not only be taken seriously but win awards. Moore may have been ahead of her time, but at least she’s able to put it all into perspective and reap the benefits several decades later.
