Demi Moore was in some of the most truly iconic ‘90s movies, like Ghost, Striptease, G.I. Jane, and more. After not appearing in too many mainstream movies during the 2000s/2010s, the bankable star’s comeback came in the amazing body horror movie The Substance, for which she received awards recognition. While many actresses in their 60s might be worried about aging in Hollywood, Moore talks about the natural process being “a tremendous gift” and that “you could not pay me to be 21.”
For women, aging in Hollywood could be scary, with fears of getting typecast in maternal or grandmother roles compared to anything sexy or kickass. After all, Naomi Watts received an ageist remark when she first started in Hollywood, being told her roles would lessen around her 40s. Back in 2015, Maggie Gyllenhaal was told she would be too old to play the love interest of an older man back when she was 37. Fortunately, Demi Moore said at the Time100 Summit (via THR) that she doesn’t believe getting older is the end of anything:
I think that there was a sense of things ending at a certain point as opposed to the reality, which is just that we’re evolving, it’s not ending.
Right on the nose! Aging is a natural process of being human that no one should be ashamed of, in Hollywood or not. Like Demi Moore said, things are “very different” today compared to days past when aging actresses were boxed into particular roles. Now, we have actresses in their golden years who are yielding weapons and taking on masked serial killers like Jamie Lee Curtis, Helen Mirren, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Yeoh, and more.
There are even stories on screen that show how much fun retirees can have like in Thelma, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Calendar Girls, and more. We can watch movies like this and realize it won’t be the end of the world when you get older.
In The Substance, Demi Moore played Elizabeth, a once-celebrated Hollywood film star who gets fired from her long-time aerobics show because of her aging. In desperation, she decides to use a black market drug that creates a younger version of herself without thinking of the consequences. The actress who portrayed Elizabeth, on the other hand, totally embraces being in her 60s and gets honest about whether she’d go back to her 20s again:
I also have thought recently about this idea that aging and being old are not the same thing. And somehow we’ve confused that and that aging actually is a tremendous gift. I would not trade — you could not pay me to be 21. As good as it might sound, it was torture!
I understand exactly what she’s talking about, as my 20s decade wasn’t my favorite either. Once you hit your thirties, you can have a good grasp of what you want and embrace your true self.
After The Substance was released, Demi Moore got real about how her comeback project pushed her out of her comfort zone to portray the violence women inflict on themselves as their bodies change. While the Oscar-nominated flick was meant to be a satire, it really did get real about the unrealistic expectations Hollywood can place on celebrities and how that can negatively change the way we see ourselves.
What made Moore game for those intense viral scenes was understanding the deep knowledge that your outside won’t improve if the person inside of you doesn’t. Unlike her character, it looks to me like the talented actress knows exactly who she is and isn’t afraid to show it.
Demi Moore is a clear example of an actress who refuses to let Hollywood scare her about aging and prefers to view it as a “tremendous gift.” With an unmistakable connection to The Substance’s themes of the price of an aging fix-it, being in her 60s didn’t stop Moore from winning a Golden Globe or getting her first Oscar nomination for her transformative role. With so much award recognition this year, I only see the A Few Good Men actress’s career on the upswing.