When Demi Moore was 40, she did a bikini scene in “Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.”
“I had done Charlie's Angels and there was a lot of talk around this bikini scene, and it was all so over the top, there was a lot of talk about how I looked,” the Hollywood beauty told actress Michelle Yeoh in a conversation with Interview Magazine about how turning 40 affected her career.
“And then I found that there didn't seem to be a place for me. I didn't feel like I didn't belong there. It was more like I felt like I wasn't 20 or 30, but I still wasn't what they perceived as a mother.” Moore was already a mother of three at the time.
She added that her 40s were a time when she felt “not dead, but flat” in the industry.
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Demi Moore spoke in a conversation with actress Michelle Yeoh for Interview magazine about how turning 40 has affected her career. (September 2024 issue of Interview Magazine)
The 61-year-old actress is doing press for her new horror film “The Substance,” in which she plays a 50-year-old celebrity who finds a way to temporarily rejuvenate herself — with troubling side effects.
Later in the interview, Moore called the film “a unique way to explore this theme of aging, of social conditioning, of what I also see as the pressure of the idealized woman by the man that we, as women, have accepted.”
Moore was a rising star in the 1980s and 1990s, making a name for herself as a sex symbol in Hollywood. (September 2024 issue of Interview Magazine)
“At its core, what really matters is what we do to ourselves, and I loved that it was illustrated in such a physical way, showing that violence with what we do with our thoughts, how we attack ourselves and distort things. There's great power in knowing that what we do to ourselves is a choice, and that we can make a different choice.”
Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood for a time. (September 2024 issue of Interview Magazine)
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Moore was a rising star in the 1980s and 1990s, rising to prominence as a Hollywood sex symbol with films including “St. Elmo's Fire,” “Ghost,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Striptease” and “G.I. Jane.”
Demi Moore filming the bikini scene in “Charlie's Angels” in 2002. (Mel Bouzad/Getty Images)
She was also the highest-paid actress in Hollywood for a time.
In 2019, she told Diane Sawyer about her “I have nothing to lose” mentality after dropping out of high school and leaving home as a teenager. She had once been raped, witnessed her mother attempt suicide multiple times, and began trying to make it in Hollywood.
In 2019, Moore told Diane Sawyer about her “I've got nothing to lose” mentality after dropping out of high school and leaving home as a teenager to begin trying to make it in Hollywood. (September 2024 issue of Interview Magazine)
“I don't have anything, why not?” she told Sawyer about what she was thinking at the time.
Following her divorce from Hollywood heartthrob Bruce Willis in 2000, Moore married actor Ashton Kutcher, a relationship that was hyped in the media largely because he was 15 years younger.
During their 10-year marriage, Moore became synonymous with the term “cougar.”
Elizabeth Hurley attributes her eternal beauty to the years she spent in the makeup chair
Moore recently joked to Kelly Ripa on her podcast “Let's Talk Off Camera” that being a “sex symbol” was her “greatest role” because “it's not who I am.”
Ashton Kutcher was 15 years younger than Moore when they married. (Chris Polk/FilmMagic)
“I realize that I really like being busy. You said earlier something like, 'Oh, my career has always been on fire.' And I'll tell you, that's not true. When I got to 40, I felt like they didn't know what to do with me,” she said. “Now I feel like women in their 40s, it's a perception shift, but I was part of the transition group and they were like, 'We don't have anything for you.'”
Moore says that when she “turned 40,” the entertainment industry “didn't know what to do with me.” (September 2024 issue of Interview Magazine)
Ripa said she felt Moore helped “change the perception” that women in their 40s can still be sexy.
“I don't know if it was Charlie's Angels or… you know, you came out of the water in a bikini and you said, 'Remember me? Here I am,'” Ripa said.
“I don't know if it was 'Charlie's Angels' or, you know, you came out of the water in a bikini and you were like, 'Remember me? Here I am,'” Kelly Ripa said of Moore. (September 2024 issue of Interview magazine)
Moore said she was told at the time that she looked “too young” to play certain roles, but she was not 30, which made her too old for many roles.
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Moore said she was told at the time that she looked “too young” to play certain roles, but she was not 30, which made her too old for other roles. (September 2024 issue of Interview Magazine)
“And they literally said, 'We don't really know what to do with you. ' The interesting thing is seeing the change that we've experienced,” Moore said.
She added that streaming services have begun to realize that “there's a huge demographic that wants to be served. These are powerful women and, in some cases, women who are not 30, women who are not 40, women in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and it's exciting.”
These days, Moore is keeping busy. In addition to “The Substance,” she just wrapped the miniseries “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.” She was cast in Nicolas Cage’s “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” in 2022 and is set to star in Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming drama, “Landman.”
