Demi Moore has been a member of the SAG-AFTRA union for more than four decades. Now, she’s officially a SAG Award winner, taking home the 2025 statue for best actress on Sunday, February 23.
“When I got my membership to this incredible organization, it was in 1978. I was 15, almost 16, and it changed by life because it gave me meaning, it gave me purpose and it gave me direction,” Moore, 62, said from the stage of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles while wearing a custom black Bottega Veneta gown with Jean Schlumberger by Tiffany jewelry and Christian Louboutin shoes.
“Because I was a kid on my own who had no blueprint for life. And I certainly knew nothing about acting, but I watched and listened and I learned from all of you,” she continued. “You have all been my greatest teachers, and I am so, so grateful that I have continued over these so many years to be able to try, and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, but to be able to keep going. And I could not do that without the support of my incredible team, the people who stood behind me.”
Moore won Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for her work in The Substance as Elizabeth Sparkle, an older actress who injects herself with a mysterious de-aging serum in the body horror movie. She was nominated against The Last Showgirl‘s Pamela Anderson, Wicked‘s Cynthia Erivo, Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón and Anora’s Mikey Madison.
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It was Moore’s first time being nominated at the SAG Awards in the Best Actress category. She was previously nominated in 2007 with the stars of Bobby in a different category, Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
This has been a big awards season for Moore. In January, she won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, like, over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” the actress told the Golden Globes audience. “And I’m just so humbled and so grateful. Thirty years ago I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress,’ and at that time I made that mean that this wasn’t something that I was allowed to have. … I bought in and I believed that. And that corroded me over time to the point where, a few years ago, I thought that maybe that was it. That I’d done what I was supposed to do.”
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She added, “I was at kind of a low point, [and] I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance. And the universe told me, ‘You’re not done.’”
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! one month after her Golden Globes win, Moore explained how she was able to move past the unnamed man’s “popcorn actress” dig.
“What somebody else does or doesn’t do is irrelevant. How you hold it is everything,” she shared. “And while I may have taken [the insult] as he intended it, it’s what I made it mean about me. It’s that I made it mean that somehow I wasn’t ever going to be somebody that could be acknowledged in that kind of arena or platform, that I couldn’t win awards … But he didn’t do that. He just said the words. So that’s the difference.”
Moore added: “In our current times, and in reframing how I look at being a ‘popcorn actress,’ how fortunate do I feel that I am in a movie that not only is a popcorn movie, that’s got people into the theaters to have a communal experience, but it’s also getting critical acclaim? So, two things are possible at the same time!”
Moore is nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the upcoming 97th annual Oscars, set to take place on Sunday, March 2.
The 2025 SAG Awards aired Sunday on Netflix.
