The first time Julianne Moore had a movie written entirely for her: “I am so on board”
One of the ultimate markers of success in Hollywood is having someone write a movie with you in mind. It’s a rare occurrence, but a dream that many stars harness, and for Julianne Moore, she once got to experience the joys of this becoming a reality.
Rising to prominence in the 1990s, one of her first significant parts was in Todd Haynes’ Safe, a drama about a woman who develops a strange and mysterious illness that seems to suggest she is allergic to the outside world. It’s an incredible film, and one that really proved Moore’s skills as a leading actor, so it was only going to be a matter of time before she and Haynes collaborated again, but she didn’t exactly expect it to be a movie he’d written with her in mind.
Of course, she jumped at the chance to work with the director again, for after the success of Safe, it’d be silly to turn that down.
“Oh, I was so excited. Todd had called me,” she told Terry Keefe. “You know, we had been in contact over the years after Safe. And one day, he just called me out of the blue and said, ‘Hey! It’s me. How are you? Listen, I’ve just finished a script that I kind of wrote with you in mind. Can I send it?’ And I was like, ‘Send it! Send it!’ I got it on a Saturday morning, and I read it on the subway going to the gym”.
Set in the 1950s, the movie was Far From Heaven, which saw Moore play a housewife who watches her life crumble around her, with Dennis Quaid playing her husband, whom she catches kissing another man, in what is a tremendous exploration of societal expectation, gender roles and sexuality, with race also playing a prominent theme.
Haynes’ interest in exploring the kinds of taboos that ‘threaten’ to taint an otherwise seemingly perfect society is masterful, and the actor knew she had to take on the role.
“A funny thing happens to you when you read a script like that,” Moore explained. “You’re thrilled in your bones or something. Just the idea that there was material like that out there, and he wanted me to do it. It moved me so tremendously. And he was like, ‘Do you like it?’ I said, ‘I’m in! I am so on board with this!’ It’s an incredible honour to have something written for you that way. I’ve had a couple of parts written for me before, but I’ve never had a whole movie written for me”.
Far From Heaven earned her a ‘Best Actress’ nomination at the Oscars, although she lost out to Nicole Kidman for The Hours. Regardless, she gave a fantastic performance, and it wouldn’t be her last collaboration with Haynes, either, which saw them later join forces thrice more for I’m Not There, Wonderstruck, and May December.
Expanding on her love of working with Haynes, Moore revealed, “I’m so honoured to be kind of in a partnership with him because he’s such a tremendous talent”, expanding on how their methodologies and preparation trajectories align in a very subtle way that makes for a fruitful creative collaboration on sets.
Moore also noted about his vision and how it facilitates her performance, adding, “When you look at Todd’s lens, he communicates so much emotion in a shot, in a frame. So for me to work with someone like that who is so careful, so nuanced, so completed in a sense, gives me tremendous freedom to do my own emotional stuff.”
