The “incredible creature” who inspired Demi Moore’s career: “What do I have to lose?”
Following the release of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance in 2024, the entire cinematic world suddenly in the chokehold of the epiphany that Demi Moore is great!
Her performance as Elizabeth Sparkle, a formerly popular celebrity who struggles to find work due to her age, became a major talking point from one of the most eye-catching films of the year. It won her a ton of awards but, more importantly, put her back in the spotlight after years of being in the shade.
Much of what made Moore’s character in the film so great was how closely it mirrored her real-life career. After initially finding success as part of the Brat Pack and later in movies like Ghost and A Few Good Men, her prominence spiralled into a rapid decline. She became the subject of numerous derogatory headlines when it was revealed she’d been paid $12.5million for the movie Striptease, even though male stars have been paid much more for much worse fare. She’s not always had it easy, but she seems to have landed on her feet now.
Speaking with Interview magazine in 2021, Moore took some time to reflect on her career up to that point, and when asked about how she first committed herself to acting, she revealed that it was all down to the influence of someone very special.
“I met a young actress who I thought was the most incredible creature I had ever met,” she recalled, “Her name is Nastassja Kinski. She spoke English well, but she didn’t read it well, and we both lived in an apartment building in West Hollywood with our single mothers. She was so self-possessed, so comfortable in her own skin. I was like, ‘I don’t know what you have, but I want it’. She was pursuing acting, and I thought, ‘What do I have to lose?’ And so off I went to figure out how to fucking make it work.”
Nastassja Kinski is a German actor probably best known for playing Jane Henderson in Wim Wenders’ indie classic Paris, Texas, and has worked with some of the other greatest directors of all time, like Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader, to appear in a number of internationally acclaimed films outside of the Hollywood circuit.
Daughter of actor Klaus Kinski, who was widely regarded an exceptional talent, was nary a good human being, however, which led to a turbulent personal life for Nastassja that resulted in significant hurdles in her career. In fact, Klaus’ so-called ‘best fiend’, Werner Herzog, once got so angry with him that he almost murdered him, but on a much darker note, Pola Kinski, Klaus’ daughter and Nastassja’s half-sister, revealed after her father’s death that he had subjected her to emotional and sexual abuse when she was a child. Moreover, Nastassja is said to have been involved with director and convicted paedophile Roman Polanski when she was 15 and he was 43, showing that most ‘great’ men are just fallen gods.
Given the truly horrendous things she has experienced in her life, it’s no surprise that Kinski has adopted such a carefree attitude towards her passion, and Moore was spot on to identify this trait and incorporate it into her own career; life’s too short to not make the best of it.
