“Amazing or a disaster”: the iconic Demi Moore role that could have gone horribly wrong
Who had Demi Moore having a career resurgence on their 2024 bingo card? The star had lay dormant for years until the release of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, in which she played a semi-autobiographical faded starlet who uses a dangerous drug to create a younger version of herself. The movie is brilliant, full of fun and squishy gore, and Moore gives an unexpectedly heartfelt performance as a woman struggling to come to grips with losing her place in society.
Prior to The Substance, Moore was best known for movies like A Few Good Men, About Last Night…, and Ghost. That last movie is particularly memorable, what with Moore and Patrick Swayze changing the way pottery wheels are looked at forever. While it’s a cherished classic now, there was no guarantee that it would have been a success. At least, that’s what its star thought, anyway.
On an episode of Hot Ones, Moore revealed that risk plays a big part in choosing her future projects. “It really means that it was holding something that was worth the risk,” she said of The Substance. She then added, “I felt that way also about Ghost because it had so many different genres mixed together that, truly, I thought, ‘This could either be amazing or a fucking disaster.’ Either way, it’s usually the kind of juice that says, ‘Step in. Take the risk. Roll the dice. Let’s see what happens.’”
Moore’s career has been exemplified by roles that other actors would be afraid to go near. Indecent Proposal, for example, sees her playing a married woman who accepts a big money offer to spend the night with a complete stranger. G.I. Jane had her shave her head and undergo Navy SEAL training while she bared all in the infamous black comedy Striptease. She has often drawn scrutiny for her unconventional performances – she’s been nominated six times for a Golden Raspberry award for ‘Worst Actress’ – but that’s never stopped her from pushing boundaries.
“I was so overwhelmed at the kind of grief that I was going to have to tap into,” she said of her famous crying scene in Ghost. “I know that there’s this kind of iconic thing about the one-eye [crying] – I didn’t plan that, I have no control over that, that’s just how it happened, but that [film] kind of helped me get over a hurdle of my own.”
This unexpected crying (and the rest of the movie) turned Ghost into a big hit. Despite modest expectations, it ended 1990 as the year’s biggest grosser and, at the time, was the third-highest-grossing movie ever made. Whoopi Goldberg won an Oscar for her role as the psychic who connects Moore’s character to her deceased lover, and the film itself was nominated for Best Picture, ultimately losing out to Dances with Wolves.
Ghost earned Moore her first ever Golden Globe nomination for a film. In a nice parallel, she was nominated for that same award (‘Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical’) for The Substance, her first major nomination since her collaboration with Swayze. Hopefully Moore can translate the success of her body horror tour de force into continued appeal. Even if she doesn’t, may she continue to take risks and give the world more interesting movies, for better or worse.
