Demi's back from the brink

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5 April 2012

Demi Moore used to be one of the most bankable actresses in the world. But then something went wrong, she stumbled through a few turkeys and for most of the past decade has been absent from our screens, notable only for her toyboy husband, Ashton Kutcher, and rumours of plastic surgery. That's about to change. She's back in a role that, she says, she was "very afraid to take" - but one which will thrust her straight into the Hollywood spotlight again.

As a Sixties lounge singer and raging, abusive alcoholic, she steals scene after scene in Emilio Estevez's new ensemble drama, Bobby. All elaborate hairstyles and glittering outfits, the 44-year-old actress looks more glamorous than ever as Virginia Fallon, a vicious diva who has driven her husband (Estevez) to distraction and is pelting towards self-destruction. It's a career-defining performance - they're talking Oscars.

Estevez's film, which follows 22 characters (an outrageously starry cast includes Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone and William H Macy) at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the day of Bobby Kennedy's assassination, won a nineminute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. It has since been gathering rave reviews, and one of Moore's scenes in particular has been singled out: her moment of redemption when she sits in the chair of the compassionate hotel hairdresser (played by Stone) and breaks down. The scene between the two faded screen goddesses is one of the film's best.

Moore's complicated character may represent something of a departure from her usual popcorn roles - but has strong personal resonance. Her mother, also called Virginia, like her character, was an alcoholic.

"The fact that she was called Virginia grounded the part in something that was familiar," explains the Lacroix-clad actress when I meet her. "And, although there were aspects of it that were painful, it was actually very liberating for me.

"Emilio knew my mother and she was a pained soul. But it was a great gift being able to go to the depths of the soul that lives underneath the pain of this character." Moore smiles thoughtfully. "I had an unusual childhood."

Her mother, Virginia Guynes, was 19 when she had her daughter, Demetria, in New Mexico. Demi's father left the picture before she was born - married to her mother for only two months. Her alcoholic stepfather killed himself when Demi was 17, and his job as a salesman meant that the dysfunctional family had moved house 30 times before she reached 14. When she moved to Los Angeles, in 1980, Demi was already estranged from her mother and the two would only be reconciled when Virginia was diagnosed with a brain tumour in the late Nineties. She died at the age of 54 in 1998.

"I had a very young mother," Moore says. "But I know she tried to do the best she could and that in the mix of it all - and she was nutty, trust me - she really loved me. It wasn't always the kind of love I wanted but that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't what I needed."

Since her turbulent childhood Demi has taken to Kabbalah and consistently re-invented herself. Look at her career: from Ghost, to Striptease, to GI Jane, to her mature performance in Bobby. They all mark different stages in two decades lived before the cameras.

It has been a complicated 20 years - at home and on the screen. In 1980 she married the singer Freddy Moore, 12 years her senior. She took his name but divorced him in 1984. She then dated Estevez and the two were engaged, but that was before she met Bruce Willis in 1987. After a whirlwind two-month romance, they were married.

Moore had been busy making a name for herself in the Eighties in lightweight Brat Pack movies such as St Elmo's Fire and About Last Night, but when she married Willis - himself on the cusp of movie stardom - her stock rose as both celebrity and movie star. After Ghost (1990), A Few Good Men with Jack Nicholson (1992) and Indecent Proposal with Robert Redford (1993), Moore was one of the biggest names in the world and she commanded a then record-breaking $12.5 million salary for the hilariously awful Striptease in 1996.

While conquering the world, the superstar couple also managed to have three children - Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, born between 1988 and 1994. But with their separation and divorce, in 2000, came a souring in Moore's movie career. She was never a strong enough actress to carry films on her own and when she tried, in The Scarlet Letter, The Juror and Striptease, the films were savaged by critics. Then came the decision to focus on helping her children through the upheaval at home and put her career on hold.

"Whenever there's a divorce in the family, it can be difficult for the children, and I knew that if I wasn't with them at that point, I could have bigger problems in the future," she says. "I never saw it as retiring or giving up work. I just figured I'd do it again later."

Such determination is probably what helped her conduct one of the most amicable divorces in Hollywood. Handily, Willis happily endorses her relationship with Kutcher, the 28-year-old former model who is 16 years her junior and half Willis's age.

"Bruce is a wonderful father," says Moore. And she seems to mean it. "He's present and involved. My children have a father who is there so they don't need somebody to replace him, but they also get somebody, in Ashton, who loves them and guides them.

"If Bruce wants to stop by and have dinner, he can just call and come by," she adds, describing their out-of-the-ordinary family set-up. "We spend all our holidays together, you know. I think it's come with a mutual effort on all our parts and I don't think it has to be as unique as it seems when you place your children as the priority."

As for Kutcher, she describes him as "the best husband in the world". "And I am not a small package to be taking on," she laughs. "I don't just have baggage. I come with trunks."

The situation is hard to comprehend fully , but perhaps it is Moore's wide-eyed candour and maternal good intentions that hold the family unit together. "Ashton never tried to replace Bruce or be their father," she says. "And Bruce equally respects Ashton. As for the age difference, what we sometimes forget is that there are older people who are quite young and not so mature. Ashton is unusually mature and wise; we feel like two souls meeting ... and he's not too bad to look at either," she adds.

Moore is not so bad herself and was recently hired by cosmetics giant L'Oréal as the face for a new campaign targeting women over 40. She has had plastic surgery - she had a breast enhancement after her third baby - and is not embarrassed to admit it. A recent report even alleged she has just undergone $5,000 worth of surgery on her knees; sources were quoted as saying that Moore couldn't stand the fact that any part of her wasn't perfect. But Moore won't talk about it today. She has a different message for me.

"Hopefully after we've lived a little bit, we can become a little bit more comfortable with who we are." she says. "There's perfection in each of us as we are."

It's mere coincidence that Moore's next film is called Flawless. It's a heist caper she shot in London with Michael Caine in which she plays an executive who teams up with a caretaker to steal some diamonds. And she also has Mr Brooks in the can, a thriller in which she plays a detective investigating a serial killer played by Kevin Costner. She really is getting the career back on track.

"My children hit a certain point where they asked if I was ever going to work again," she says. "So the balance changed and work is becoming important again. Maybe without it there was a part of me that wasn't whole. I don't know. Right now I'm really happy to be back."

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Robert F. Kennedy

State of Virginia

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Demi's back from the brink

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