“I’m warning you: She loves to dominate a teddy bear,” Demi Moore says as her teacup Chihuahua, Pilaf, toddles into the room. Moore, perched on a kitchen stool in her Los Angeles home, watches her dog with a sly smile. “You’re going to see some humping.”
Pilaf has had a busy year — she was featured in Vogue, and seen in the front rows of Paris Fashion Week — so bringing her to the Cannes Film Festival in May was a risk: Would the pint-size bundle of cuteness upstage her owner at the premiere of her blood-drenched horror film “The Substance”? Perhaps Moore knew the role was more beastly than her little pet could ever be.
“I didn’t know how the movie was going to go,” Moore admits as Pilaf, now in the family room, ravages her stuffed animal in a patch of sunlight. “It’s so out of the box. It could have either really worked or been a disaster. To be completely transparent, body horror is not a genre I was extremely familiar with.”
But French writer-director Coralie Fargeat clearly was, drawing on Robert Zemeckis’ “Death Becomes Her,” David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” as she depicts Moore literally splitting open to reveal a younger, more perfect version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley. Moore’s character, Elisabeth Sparkle — an Oscar-winning actress who became a daytime-TV fitness guru in later life — is bereft after a vile network executive (Dennis Quaid) cancels her show. So much so that she takes a back-alley drug that uses her DNA to create an improved replica, with the strict rule that Elisabeth must switch between her two identities, old and young, every seven days — or else. It’s symbolically rich twice over: first, for anyone who’s ever noticed a wrinkle in the mirror and wanted to wish it away, and second, for those of us seeing Moore in a fresh light.
As the faded star whose self-loathing creates a kind of self-absorbed doppelgänger who could destroy them both, Moore has never been more electric onscreen. “The part needed to be embodied by an actress who was a symbol herself,” Fargeat says. “But I knew those kinds of actresses would be frightened by jumping into something that confronts them with their own phobias. Demi was at a stage in her life where she has confronted all the fears her character has and the violence and self-hatred it can bring on you. She has processed all that in a peaceful way.”
In stark contrast to Elisabeth, who strips away her flesh while seeking approval from men, Moore, at 61, has never been more comfortable in her own skin. “The film raises an important idea: When you chase after something you think is better, you risk losing what you have,” she says.
It was a long road to get here: After Moore established herself as an actress to watch in 1984’s “St. Elmo’s Fire” and 1986’s “About Last Night,” her career exploded in the 1990s when she led the box office with hits such as “Indecent Proposal,” “Disclosure” and, of course, “Ghost.” But when she entered her highest-paid-female-star-in-the-world era, with films like “Striptease” and “G.I. Jane,” and appeared nude and very pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair, her body was the story. Somehow, her talent was an afterthought.
After suffering a string of flops, she stepped out of the spotlight before the spotlight could abandon her as it did Elisabeth Sparkle, raising her three children (with then-husband Bruce Willis) in Hailey, Idaho.
But with her revealing 2019 memoir “Inside Out” and dark turns in projects like “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” and now “The Substance,” Moore has shown a willingness to crack open her iconic image to reveal something grittier within. Qualley says Moore was relentless in fine-tuning her character, “always on the tip of refinement, understanding it more after every take.”
“The Substance,” which thrilled Cannes and will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, has earned Moore the best reviews of her career and even some Oscar buzz. It’s a reminder of just what audiences have been missing.
Get ready for the Demi-ssance.
Let’s start with the 11-minute standing ovation this movie got in Cannes, your first time with a film in competition.
I’ve read some stories that said it was 13 minutes.
After this, I will sit you down for a long talk about how Variety calculates standing ovations at festivals. It’s fair to say “The Substance” is one of the most brutal films about aging in Hollywood ever made. Why did you say yes?
I felt like it was one of the most interesting ways to explore the subject. While it’s framed around women, I really felt like it was relatable to all of us as humans — the feeling of being discarded, overlooked. A lack of appreciation for who we are.
Coralie told me that you gave her a copy of your autobiography before your first meeting. Why did you do that?
Coralie is extremely cautious and thorough. All in, we met six times before I was officially offered the part. She was meeting with a lot of people, looking to find the right match for the two main characters. I gave her the book as a way of knowing me — my experience with my body, and the value I gave to my body. The personal torture I put myself through. All that seemed to connect to her big time. She knew that I really understood who the character was.
You were open in your book about your struggle to stay thin, and how it almost cost you work. Were you concerned about doing a project that was so body-centric?
I had no fear about the subject matter. I know how relatable the story really is. But I put a lot of thoughtful consideration into the level of vulnerability and rawness that was required. The things that push you out of your comfort zone are also what give you the greatest opportunity for growth.