The director who “most intensely” inspired Julianne Moore: “It woke me up to cinema”
She doesn’t always get the recognition she deserves, but Julianne Moore is one of the greatest actors of her generation.
The number of iconic movies she has been a part of is seriously impressive, from early hits like The Fugitive to more recent triumphs like May December, her command of the screen is second to none. Although she hasn’t always made the right choices with her career—the Carrie remake comes to mind—she has still built an incredible legacy for herself.
Moore has worked with incredible directors across her long career. Alfonso Cuarón cast her in Children of Men, his terrifying vision of a world where human beings can no longer reproduce naturally. Paul Thomas Anderson is clearly a fan, having put her in both Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and she’s a very underrated part of the Coen brothers’ slacker classic The Big Lebowski. She also played a part in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic World sequel, The Lost World, a role she called “career-defining”.
There is one director, however, who has had the biggest impact on Moore’s career. Speaking to Deepest Dream, the Academy Award-winner spoke about the first time she saw a movie by legendary filmmaker Robert Altman, and the way it changed her life forever.
“I saw 3 Women in a revival house when I was in Boston,” she recalled. “Somehow I missed all the films he made in the ’70s because I was too busy watching TV, because I was a kid. And I saw this movie and I was like, ‘What is that? Who is that?’ Suddenly, I saw that there was somebody directing a movie, telling me a story.”
She added how it turned her on to her career path of greatness, noting, “And for the first time in my life, I said, ‘I want to do that. I think I want to work with somebody like that’. It just woke me up to cinema and to Bob in particular. So I hope I carry that with me everywhere.”
3 Women was released in 1977 and stars Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule in the titular roles. It follows the increasingly unsettling relationship between the trio; self-confident Millie (Duvall); timid Mildred (Spacek); and ominous Willie (Rule). The women are all different ages and at very different stages in their lives, which is what makes their intersection so fascinating. The movie was a major critical success following its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, where Altman was nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or prize.
It’s not often that an actor gets to work with the director who helped shape their cinematic lexicon, but Moore had the privilege of starring in two of her idol’s features. Upon seeing her in a production of Uncle Vanya, Altman decided to cast the young star in his 1993 anthology piece, Short Cuts, based on the works of Raymond Carver. Six years later, the pair reunited for Cookie’s Fortune, a dark comedy about a family who go to extreme lengths to recover money left behind by their recently-deceased aunt.
Altman passed away in 2006, leaving behind a remarkable body of work. As both a fan of and a contributor to that work, Moore is uniquely positioned to comment on one of Hollywood’s most unique creative forces, and she’s used that to highlight the first of his films to rock her world.
