Why I wasn’t afraid to strip naked on screen again at 61, says grandmother Demi Moore amid daring Hollywood comeback
SHE may be 61 and a grandmother, but Demi Moore says she loved stripping off again for her latest movie.
The actress goes nude in horror film The Substance, which premiered in Cannes last week, and was excited to still be pushing her boundaries as she enters her seventh decade.
In an exclusive interview, Demi reveals: “I’ve always looked for roles that pushed me out of my comfort zone, and also are thoughtful and provocative.
“If I look at something and it scares me a little bit, I usually know that maybe there’s something in it.
“Because if I don’t do things where I step out of my own comfort zone, then I can’t grow.
“It’s not always easy watching yourself. But it’s exciting. It’s wonderful to feel the excitement.”
Demi is renowned for making bold career choices.
In 1991 she stripped off for the cover of Vanity Fair magazine when seven months pregnant with Scout LaRue, the second of three daughters she has with ex-husband Bruce Willis, 69.
Her clothes were off again in 1996 film Striptease before she showed off rippling muscles — and became the highest-paid actress in Hollywood — with the role of a female soldier in 1997’s GI Jane.
Now The Substance, which is due for release here later this year, has become the most talked-about premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
It received a 13-minute standing ovation, with critics even talking about a potential Oscar for Demi.
‘Vulnerability and rawness’
She plays a faded Hollywood fitness instructor whose desperation to be young again leads her to take a black market age-reversing injection.
This results in the creation of a younger version of herself, played by 29-year-old Margaret Qualley, whose body she can only ever inhabit for seven days at a time before reverting back to her older self.
If she breaks the rules — spoiler alert, she does — things go wrong.
In one scene, Demi studies her naked body for a long time, with Margaret’s character then doing the same to observe her new, younger skin.
Demi credits Maid star Margaret, the daughter of actress Andie MacDowell, 66, with soothing her nerves about appearing naked on camera again.
She says: “The script was very unique, very complex. And it really required a real level of vulnerability and exposing oneself in a very raw sense.
“I had a great partner in Margaret, who I felt very safe with.
“We obviously were quite close — naked. We got a lot of levity in those moments at how absurd those certain situations were.
“Going into it, it was really spelled out, the level of vulnerability and rawness that was required to tell the story.
“It was a very vulnerable experience and required a lot of sensitivity and a lot of conversation about what we were trying to accomplish.”
Demi’s character has a dramatic descent into ageing, so the actress had to spend eight hours a day in make-up having prosthetics applied.
She says: “The transformation that takes place is really dramatic. It’s not glamorous, I’ll just warn you.”
Nudity has been a recurring theme throughout Demi’s career, since her first major movie, Blame It On Rio, in 1984.
Her 1990 blockbuster Ghost spawned one of cinema’s all-time classic moments thanks to her potter’s wheel love scene with Patrick Swayze.
She then starred in 1993 erotic drama Indecent Proposal and appeared nude in 1995’s The Scarlet Letter.
By the time she banked a record-breaking £10million to appear topless in Striptease in 1996, it was the sixth time she had bared her breasts on the big screen.
But Demi reveals that one of the most terrifying roles of her entire career was in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle in 2003, when she was 40.
She tells of the moment that director Joseph McGinty Nichol, known as McG, called her to say that filming had been brought forward — and he wanted her in a swimsuit.
Demi says: “Getting the call from McG saying, ‘Can you start the movie three weeks earlier? And hey, what do you think about being in a bikini?’, scared the s**t out of me.
It just irritates me that people are constantly saying how much I’ve spent on plastic surgery
Demi
“It wasn’t on my agenda. But there you go, you just roll the dice.”
The actress has managed to defy the years with her looks and there has been huge speculation about what treatments she may — or may not — have had.
In 2010 she spoke out about plastic surgery, saying: “I have had something done but it’s not on my face. Maybe one day I’ll go under the knife.
“It just irritates me that people are constantly saying how much I’ve spent on plastic surgery.”
She adds now: “I think what’s more important is how you hold yourself, not how the world is holding you.
“Because what we think is what we create. And if you buy into it . . . which is exactly what The Substance is about . . . it’s about this male perspective of the idealised woman that we as women have bought in to, not what somebody’s doing to us.
“And I think we are changing right now. We are living the change right now.”
As well as her looks, her love life has also always remained in the spotlight.
‘Glam-ma’
She and Die Hard actor Bruce — who have daughters Rumer, 35, Scout, 32, and Tallulah, 30 — split after 13 together years in 1998 but remain close.
He even attended her 2005 wedding to actor Ashton Kutcher, 46.
She sadly suffered a stillbirth pregnancy and the pair split in 2011.
Now she and Bruce’s new wife, actress and model Emma Heming Willis, 45, are both supporting him after he was diagnosed with aphasia — a language disorder that affects how you communicate — in 2022.
In March 2023 they announced that his condition had developed into frontotemporal dementia.
A month later Demi was with daughter Rumer when she gave birth to her baby girl Louetta, turning Demi into what she calls a “Glam-ma”.
For Demi, family is the most important thing in her life — and the acting is just a job.
She says: “My family, it really helps you just keep a sense of what’s really important.
“I mean, this is all wonderful. And the realisation that what I do isn’t who I am. It’s just what I do.”
And one of the most important members of her family is Pilaf, her Chihuahua, a present from one of her daughters.
Demi describes the pet as her “friend, my partner”.
Pilaf was even at Cannes with her.
Laughing, she says: “She’s my little travel mate. And she’s just a joy. That’s it. I love it.
“I usually have her in my little sling. We go everywhere. I mean, she’s been to the French Open tennis, The Louvre art gallery.
“She’s been to Broadway shows. She just saw Romeo & Juliet with Tom Holland in London.
“She is a pound and a half, the runt of her litter, but she is a star . . . and she knows it.”
Just like her human mum.