When a 1 ½-pound dog hops on your lap, there is only one possible response — joy.
The dog, a micro-Chihuahua named Pilaf, knows this, and Pilaf’s owner, Demi Moore, knows this as well, though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t apologize and ask if you’re OK with Pilaf taking liberties. I’ve had leaves fall on me that felt heavier than this dog, I tell her. Besides, who could resist an animal that its owner calls the “bonsai tree of dogs”? It’s been all of two minutes and already there’s a lifetime bond.
We’re sitting on a couch in the pool house of a Mediterranean-style home in the Hollywood Hills that has been owned over the years by Mary Astor, record producer Marshall Chess and Marilyn Manson. Moore just kicked off her boots and, looking down at the transcription app running on my phone, starts telling me how she uses one to record her dreams.
A darkly surreal fantasia about Hollywood misogyny, “The Substance” delivers some of the year’s most fearless acting, along with a bold new directorial voice.
“Sometimes I have a question that needs to be answered and I can ask that in my dreams,” Moore tells me.
“Like lucid dreaming?”
“More like dream incubation,” she answers.
Before I have time to properly follow up on that, and maybe because we’re sitting in a house giving off big ghost energy, we start talking about the dead appearing in our dreams — and our realities.
“My mother was a big smoker, and I have had quite a few experiences, not necessarily in my home, but in a hotel room or maybe a boat, and all of a sudden I smell cigarette smoke,” Moore says. “And there’s no logical explanation. And I think, ‘Maybe that’s my mom popping in.’”
Moore just posted a series of behind-the-scenes photos from her new movie, “The Substance,” that may haunt the dreams of anyone following her Instagram account. In Coralie Fargeat’s blood-soaked fable about fear and self-loathing in Hollywood, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a faded star who submits to a back-alley rejuvenation regime to reset her career. Soon, Elisabeth has a clone, Sue (Margaret Qualley), young and taut. They have to switch places every seven days in order to make the weird science work.
If you’ve seen the movie — or the old-age prosthetics she sports in those Instagram shots — you know it gets complicated.
Moore, 62, wrote with candor about her own struggles with body image in her 2019 memoir “Inside Out,” detailing the demands she put on herself, though they were often mandated by filmmakers, to project a certain physical ideal. Having read the book, it’s hard to imagine a better fit for the cautionary tale of “The Substance.”
I don’t know how hard you had to pitch yourself to win this part. But the book seems like a great way to move to the front of the line.
This movie is very personal to Coralie, and she wanted to make sure that she was going to cast someone who understood it. In many respects, Coralie is Elisabeth. So I just gave her my book. I’ve gone through a lot of stages in my own relationship with my body. So I understood the character, up to a point.
What aspects of Elisabeth baffled you?
I have family. I had my kids at 25. She’s the extreme version of someone placing their value completely in the validation of other people. Parts of Elisabeth’s story did hit me deeply, namely, the violence we can have against ourselves in the pursuit of some idea of perfection.
You went through a lot of that — dieting, extreme exercise routines — through the ’80s and ’90s ...
Being told to lose weight is humiliating. But nothing was as harsh as what I did to myself, and that’s why I think people relate to this movie. I had a young flight attendant, a gentleman, come up to me and say, “This movie made me look at what I was doing, the dieting and all these things, and I realized I just had to stop, go down a completely different path and be more kind to myself.” That’s the unexpected gift of making “The Substance.”
Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a sort of Jane Fonda-type aerobics star. (Christine Tamalet/Univerdsl Pictures) Things don’t go as planned for Demi Moore’s character in “The Substance.” (Christine Tamalet / Mubi)
The scene that people talk to me about is when Elisabeth is getting ready for a date, trying to be normal, escape her self-imposed prison and make a human connection. But she keeps going back to the mirror, wiping off the makeup and starting again.
The movie goes to extreme places, but that scene is crucial because it anchors it to a reality that we’ve all felt — harsh judgment and self-sabotaging. You know that moment of, “Let me just do this to make it a little better,” and then we make it worse and we feel defeated. You don’t like your outfit, you’re changing and nothing’s fitting, nothing’s feeling good. But when we’re not feeling good on the inside, nothing on the outside is going to make it better.
That’s the universal aspect to the movie. The specific is how Hollywood sidelines women once they reach a certain age. Did you feel that in your career?
I did. But again, for me, it’s part of our own silent agreement that says we’re less valuable. But just because that’s been the status quo doesn’t make it the truth. When we begin changing within how we hold ourselves, how we see ourselves, the outside will start to catch up and change with us.
That sounds so centered. I think I’d just take it personally when the phone stops ringing.
It’s not a question of taking it personally. It’s what you do with it when it touches those vulnerable places within you. Do you let it own you? Do you let it define you? Or do you recognize it as part of your vulnerability, a little nick at your ego? It’s that shift in how you hold it. It’s not that feelings don’t come up that don’t feel good and bring doubt and insecurity. The industry is feast or famine. That’s its nature. It’s not personal.
It’s not personal. It’s strictly business. I feel like you’ve watched “The Godfather” once or twice.
It’s true! It’s what I learned looking back on my life, writing the book. What somebody does or doesn’t do is irrelevant. Everything in life is happening for me, not to me. It doesn’t mean I always like it or that it’s going the way I want. But you can’t just choose that philosophy when things are going your way. I look at the challenges of my childhood and realize, “Wow. It really gave me a strength, a drive, an ability to take a risk.” Would I have had the same drive if things had been cushy?
Like your daughter Tallulah once said: “My mother was not raised. She was forged.”
And if you look at it that way, all the resentments and anger go away. You step back and see how it was all in service.
You need to be a life coach for Sue. She repeats all of Elisabeth’s mistakes because she can’t shake the addiction to fame.
Sue should be producing her own show! She’s got this new body. She’s looking good. Everyone loves her. So why does she return to the same horrible situation seeking the same hollow validation? Coralie and I spoke about that before we started shooting. I’ve had friends like that. The point of the movie is that we keep repeating the same mistakes until we actually change from within.
“The Substance” opens and closes on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, showing Elisabeth’s star, which starts off shiny and degrades over time. Would you even want a star after this movie?
[Laughs] I think it would be a sweet thing. I think often about it, less for me and more for my children and their children. There was conversation about doing it this year, the feeling like, “Wow. The timing would be perfect.” But there’s a bit more bureaucracy involved. I do love how she comes back around to the star, like she’s reaching back for what she sees as the love she has always craved.
Demi Moore is boldly exposed as an aging Oscar winner rejected by her producer in a hyperstylized satire that also stars Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid.
Like a salmon returning upstream. So for you, a star would be for posterity.
Yes. I spoke when Lucy Liu got hers, and it was lovely. I was so honored. I love and adore her. And I was there with the family when Bruce [Willis] got his.
How often do you see Bruce these days?
When I’m in town, I try to get over at least once a week.
Have you known people with dementia before now?
I haven’t. I’m just trying to show up and be wherever he is at any given moment. Once we were able to have an actual diagnosis and, as a collective family, be able to share that, it opened up more. It took some of the tension of uncertainty and trying to bridge between privacy and secretiveness. It is very private, but it was something that was trying to be held. So it opened up a pathway of much more ease and grace.
Speaking from experience, showing up, being present is a great approach.
Being present is a mutual gift in something that is obviously not what any of us would have wanted. But here we are. And he gets to spend time with his granddaughter, which is very sweet and moving. It’s magic.
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