Demi Moore won’t let aging stop her from reaching new heights of personal and professional success.
“I really try to be as present in the moment as possible, and what I feel is an excitement of possibilities, that we’re defining a new — I don’t want to say generation — but we are what the future is for women,” Moore, 61, shared on the Monday, September 9, episode of Today. “And I look at having my daughters, and I don’t want there to ever be in their minds that there is an end. To me, this is the most exciting time of my life. It is.”
Moore — who shares daughters Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30, with her ex-husband Bruce Willis — continued: “My children are grown. I have the most independence and autonomy to really redefine where I want to go. I don’t know what that looks like or what that is, but I’m just excited to be living in it.”
The perception and treatment of aging women in society is the topic of Moore’s upcoming body horror film, The Substance, which hits theaters on September 18. She stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress who gets fired from her TV fitness show for being too old. In hopes of regaining her youth, she takes a black market drug called The Substance to create a younger alternate version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley. Things take a dangerous turn as the two women fight for time in the spotlight.
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“It’s a little bit like The Picture of Dorian Gray meets Death Becomes Her with a Jane Fonda workout,” Moore told Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb of the film. “But I think it really is a very unique way of really delving into, I think, a very relevant subject matter, which is aging, the perception, the collective consciousness of women’s value diminishing as we get older, which just isn’t the truth. But in this case, it kind of is representing some of the old ideals.”
The role pushed Moore out of her physical and emotional “comfort zone,” she said. “The message, for me, that was so powerful in this is not what’s happening in the circumstances around [you], but it’s the violence that we have against ourselves. And that’s what I feel was really powerful in this.”
Moore said she could relate to her character’s motivation in the movie, as she herself struggled with body image in the past. “I placed a lot of value on what my body looked like, as being a defining marker of whether I belonged or not, whether I could succeed or not, all of those things,” she explained.
Coming to terms with aging is the where the similarities between Moore and Elisabeth end. “This is a woman who has only her career, only that which she’s paved through her work. She has no family. And so often, we place too much importance on the external markers,” she stated. “And I think what this is really also trying to say is, ‘Where is our real priority? Where’s our real love? Where does our real joy come from?’ And it can only come through that self-love, self-acceptance.”
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In addition to enjoying praise and Oscar buzz for her performance in The Substance, Moore is also an ecstatic first-time grandmother. Rumer welcomed her daughter, Louetta, in April 2023 with her ex-boyfriend Derek Richard Thomas.
“I love it,” Moore said of her taking on the role of a grandparent. “She is the cutest. Rumer just sent me a photo of her with spaghetti on her head.”
