The one thing Julianne Moore refuses to do on screen: “I don’t find it appealing”
Sometimes actors have to do things they don’t want to do. Delivering uncomfortable lines, wearing hideous outfits, or perhaps kissing someone they have no attraction to.
When you’re just getting your foot in the door in the film world, it’s all too easy to let the big dogs call the shots. You might feel like you haven’t earned the right to speak up about your own limits – but seasoned actors will tell you, if there’s one thing that truly matters, it’s being upfront about what you’re actually comfortable with.
Julianne Moore’s picked this up through years of hard graft in Hollywood, first making waves in the ’90s with roles in The Big Lebowski, Safe, and Boogie Nights. She’s never been one to shy away from pushing boundaries – whether it’s drug use, explicit sex, nudity or violence – but as time’s gone on, she’s drawn one particular line in the sand that sits firmly with her own sense of right and wrong.
The actor has wielded guns in movies in the past, but for over 15 years, she has stayed away from roles that force her to shoot firearms. “Yes. It’s not something I feel drawn to at all. I don’t find it appealing,” she told The Sunday Times.
“It’s really important when you talk about gun safety and people blame entertainment to realise that the entire world consumes the same entertainment as the US, but the US has easy access to weapons,” Moore added. “So I am not a big fan of violent movies, but I also don’t blame gun violence on entertainment”.
The debate surrounding violence in the media has long divided people, with some criticising the prevalence of guns – particularly when they’re shown in a romanticised way – as a factor in inspiring real-life gun violence. However, if so many of us can consume violent movies without turning into bloodthirsty psychopaths, surely the problem is a lot more deeply rooted?
Regardless, gun-heavy movies certainly do desensitise us to violence, numbing us to the grim reality of gun deaths that happen every day across the world. In 2023, 47,000 people were killed in the United States because of gun violence, and you’d think that with the amount of mass shootings that have plagued America for decades that people would actually want to ban firearms, but, as everyone is well aware, there’s no chance of that happening anytime soon.
Why so many Americans love the idea of owning a gun will remain a perpetual mystery to me, but perhaps that’s because I’m British. Your average Brit doesn’t keep a firearm stashed away in their bedside table, but over in America, it seems increasingly common. Moore doesn’t want to fuel this distinctively American obsession with guns through her movies, instead opting for roles that won’t see her picking up a weapon.
With the death of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust in 2021, the need for better gun regulations during film shoots has been widely discussed – and it’s about time. The whole incident called into question the need for guns in movies in the first place, which is an argument that Moore can certainly get behind. When real lives are put in danger, she wonders if it’s really worth it.
