Demi Moore: There didn’t seem to be a place for me in Hollywood in my 40s

Hollywood actress Demi Moore has said there did not seem to be “a place” for her in the industry when she was in her 40s.

The Ghost actress, 61, reflected on her role in horror film The Substance, in which she plays a fading Hollywood beauty who turns back time with a new drug.

In conversation with Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh for Interview magazine, Moore said the way Yeoh had described the movie and how it explores self-loathing and the inability to accept who you are is what “moved” her when she read the script.

She said: “It was such a unique way to be exploring this issue of aging, of societal conditioning, of what I also see as the pressure of the male-idealized woman that we as women have bought into.

“At the core of it, what it’s really about 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.”

Moore said Yeoh had reflected “the idea of remembering that we can define where we want it to go and who we are” in her Oscars speech.

When Yeoh, 62, won the lead actress award for Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2023, she told women to not “let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime”.

Moore added: “To me, what’s exciting is, in the film, I’m representing a past ideal and not what my present is.”

Asked if that is why the script resonated with her, she said: “Oh, definitely. What’s interesting is I felt it more when I hit my forties.

“I had done Charlie’s Angels, and there was a lot of conversation around this scene in a bikini, and it was all very heightened, a lot of talk about how I looked.

“And then I found that there didn’t seem to be a place for me. I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong.

“It’s more like I felt that feeling of, I’m not 20, I’m not 30, but I wasn’t yet what they perceived as a mother.”

Moore played Madison Lee in the 2003 action comedy film Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and she is also known for starring in GI Jane (1997) and Indecent Proposal (1993).

The actress also spoke about what it was like to film nude scenes for the movie and said the nudity “was not about it being sexualized, but it was about being raw and exposed in those ways that we are when we’re alone and we’re not thinking that anybody’s looking”.

The Substance received a 13-minute ovation when it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and Moore said she “was extremely humbled” by this.