Julianne Moore: ​‘Hol­ly­wood isn’t there to pro­duce inter­est­ing roles for actors’

Top of your head, name an actress over 50. No, not Meryl Streep. Think friski­er, less mono­lith­ic. Got it yet? Have a club. She’s one of only two women to have received the top act­ing prizes at the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film fes­ti­vals (the oth­er being Juli­ette Binoche). She reg­u­lar­ly hop­scotch­es between fran­chise behe­moths, off­beat come­dies and inti­mate peri­od dra­mas and over the last three decades has worked with every­one from Paul Thomas Ander­son and the Coen broth­ers to Steven Spiel­berg and Rid­ley Scott. Meet the pale­on­tol­o­gist, porn­star, mil­i­tant fem­i­nist artist, sub­ur­ban house­wife and C‑list Hol­ly­wood Jezebel who’s got us screaming…

Here’s the thing about Julianne Moore: she might not always be the first name on everyone’s lips, but there are few more recog­nis­able, not to men­tion reli­able, actors work­ing today. It’s impos­si­ble to dis­til her career down to a sin­gle, defin­ing role, and equal­ly she isn’t exact­ly syn­ony­mous with any par­tic­u­lar type or char­ac­ter. She’s ver­sa­tile, but she’s not had to change course or con­stant­ly rein­vent her­self in order to stay on top. So what’s the secret to her longevi­ty? And where did it all begin for her? LWLies caught up with the shin­ing light of David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars to find out.

At the turn of the decade, before the inde­pen­dent film explo­sion and before CGI tech­nol­o­gy reju­ve­nat­ed the sum­mer block­buster, Moore was work­ing on a ​“job-by-job basis”, pri­mar­i­ly on cheap TV seri­als like BL Stryk­er, the short-lived Burt Reynolds cop dra­ma. The­atre pro­vid­ed stead­ier foot­ing — Moore regards a work­shop the­atre pro­duc­tion of Chekhov’s ​‘Uncle Vanya’ as an impor­tant for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence. Yet for a long time, the door to Hol­ly­wood remained firm­ly shut. ​“I sim­ply didn’t have a movie career,” Moore reflects, ​“I would always get close to stuff but not get it.” Then the inde­pen­dent film move­ment burst into life. In what seemed like an instant, every­thing changed. ​“Sud­den­ly I had offers com­ing in from peo­ple who want­ed to work with me,” she says. ​“I found my spot.”

Moore con­tin­ues, ​“I went from being an actress who had a career in tele­vi­sion to an actress who had a movie career. It was shock­ing. Things changed so quick­ly for me. It real­ly wasn’t some­thing I had expect­ed at all.” No soon­er had Moore’s movie career begun than she land­ed her big break. ​“I was some­one who ben­e­fit­ted tremen­dous­ly from the birth of inde­pen­dent film, but it was real­ly Short Cuts that made me.” After being plucked from rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty by Robert Alt­man, who saw enough in Moore to entrust her with one of his film’s meati­est mono­logues, the phone didn’t stop ring­ing. Eye-catch­ing roles in Todd Haynes’ Safe and James Ivory’s Sur­viv­ing Picas­so fol­lowed in quick suc­ces­sion. And then, she met Paul.

“I was at a par­ty and some­one intro­duced me to this young film­mak­er called Paul Thomas Ander­son,” Moore recalls. ​“He would have only been 26 at the time, and he came up to me and was like, ​‘You’re gonna be in my movie, man.’ He was love­ly and super con­fi­dent, and it was a gor­geous script. I said yes pret­ty much on the spot.” Despite Moore’s eager­ness, those around her expressed some con­cerns about Boo­gie Nights. ​“Every­one was unsure about me doing a movie about porn,” she reveals. ​“A lot of peo­ple dis­tanced them­selves from it. But I nev­er saw it as a movie about the porn indus­try; I saw it as a movie about this real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing group of peo­ple. And it was clear to me right away that I was in the hands of a great filmmaker.”

Along with Boo­gie Nights, it’s impos­si­ble to talk about Julianne Moore’s career in the ​’90s with­out men­tion­ing The Dude. Yet what’s inter­est­ing about both Boo­gie Nights and The Big Lebows­ki – two movies that are con­sid­ered mod­ern clas­sics today – is that nei­ther was deemed a sure thing at the time of Moore sign­ing on. While Boo­gie Nights was met with wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim upon its release in ​’97, Ander­son was vir­tu­al­ly unknown at the time, with just his 1996 debut fea­ture, Hard Eight, under his belt.

By con­trast the Coen broth­ers were well estab­lished when The Big Lebows­ki bowled into cin­e­mas in ​’98, but after the sur­prise suc­cess of Far­go two years ear­li­er, it suf­fered from sig­nif­i­cant­ly raised expec­ta­tions. ​“I remem­ber when The Big Lebows­ki came out and it tanked,” Moore recalls with a hint of sus­tained dis­be­lief. ​“The crit­ics just didn’t get it. Every­one was say­ing, ​‘Oh, this isn’t as fun­ny as Far­go.’ I thought it was hys­ter­i­cal at the time, so I feel very grat­i­fied that it’s since turned into their biggest cult film. It was so bizarre how that hap­pened, how it kind of became this event movie that peo­ple still flock around. But I was nev­er in doubt. So I sup­pose I must have good instincts.”

“You’re going to have to refresh my mem­o­ry…” Moore urges after a long, con­tem­pla­tive pause. LWLies has just insti­gat­ed anoth­er moment of ret­ro­spec­tion, and it’s com­plete­ly thrown her. Oblig­ing­ly, we reel off a few choice cuts from Moore’s back cat­a­logue cir­ca 2000 – 2010 – Far from Heav­en, The Hours, Chil­dren of Men, Sav­age Grace, I’m Not There, Blind­ness, A Sin­gle Man… ​“Wait, did I real­ly do that many movies?” We could have list­ed a dozen more. ​“It’s fun­ny to think of my career in 10- year chunks,” she says. ​“I hon­est­ly don’t remem­ber when I made cer­tain movies, but there’s def­i­nite­ly some that feel clos­er than oth­ers. I can’t believe that A Sin­gle Man was the same decade as Far From Heav­en. I was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent per­son then.”

It turns out the lat­ter is one of the movies Moore does remem­ber mak­ing, for two very good rea­sons. ​“Far From Heav­en was pret­ty spe­cial for me because Todd [Haynes] wrote the part for me and I have a clear mem­o­ry of the first time he showed me the script. And also, around the same time I found out that I was preg­nant with my daugh­ter. It couldn’t have been a bet­ter expe­ri­ence. Not just get­ting the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with Todd again but to be with him, and then to also find out that I was expect­ing a girl when I already had a lit­tle boy. It was tru­ly wonderful.”

A Dou­glas Sirk-inspired ​’50s-set dra­ma in which Moore plays a Con­necti­cut house­wife who finds solace in a friend­ship with her black gar­den­er as her world crum­bles around her, Far From Heav­en marked the sec­ond of Moore’s three col­lab­o­ra­tions with Haynes, sand­wiched between 1995’s Safe and 2007’s I’m Not There. It also earned her a fourth Acad­e­my Award nomination.

Inter­est­ing­ly, that last detail is not some­thing Moore brings up when dis­cussing the film. Come to think of it, she hasn’t men­tioned awards or plau­dits the entire inter­view. If she’s not pre­oc­cu­pied with shiny gold­en stat­uettes, then, what is it that keeps her moti­vat­ed? ​“It’s the sto­ries that mat­ter,” she explains. ​“A lot of the movies of mine that I love now are the ones that I loved right away, from the first time I read the script. I loved them on the page.”

Anoth­er movie that holds a spe­cial place in Moore’s heart for much the same rea­son is A Sin­gle Man, Tom Ford’s opu­lent direc­to­r­i­al debut. ​“I remem­ber Tom being sur­prised that I was so recep­tive to the sto­ry,” she recalls. ​“He was so enthu­si­as­tic and want­ed to meet me and show me all his sto­ry­boards and stuff. I was pret­ty much just like, ​‘Okay, great. Let’s go!’ It was the sto­ry and char­ac­ter that attract­ed me, and that’s always been the case with the films I’ve loved doing. Above all, I’m inter­est­ed in human dynam­ics, in who were are, how we treat each oth­er and what we want.”

All of the movies list­ed above can be direct­ly traced back to Moore’s career bloom in the ear­ly ​’90s. But the 2000s were equal­ly impor­tant in terms of con­sol­i­dat­ing her com­mer­cial appeal. Arriv­ing four years after Steven Spielberg’s Juras­sic Park sequel, The Lost World, 2001’s Han­ni­bal gave Moore her sec­ond taste of work­ing on an icon­ic franchise.

“When­ev­er I talk about my career I always find myself return­ing to my work with Steven and Rid­ley,” she says. ​“I learned so much from both of them. The amount of cin­e­mat­ic skill they have is unbe­liev­able. The scope they can han­dle, how beau­ti­ful­ly they seemed to jug­gle all these dif­fer­ent com­pli­ca­tions. Work­ing with Rid­ley was absolute­ly exhil­a­rat­ing for me because he’d have three cam­eras oper­at­ing at the same time. And the same thing with Steven, he’d have you run in and cue three heli­copters to fly over you. I’ve been so for­tu­nate to have been exposed to so many dif­fer­ent types of filmmaker.”

Maps to the Stars, the movie that looks set to define the third chap­ter of Moore’s career, almost didn’t hap­pen for her. Cro­nen­berg orig­i­nal­ly approached Moore with the part of Havana Seg­rand in 2009, and she admits to hav­ing been ter­ri­fied about meet­ing the direc­tor. ​“I’d nev­er met David before and I was real­ly ner­vous because I thought he was going to be, I don’t know, scary or some­thing. But he’s the most won­der­ful, down-to-earth per­son.” Hav­ing flipped for the script, Moore was left ​“dev­as­tat­ed” when the financ­ing fell through. Cro­nen­berg turned his atten­tion to East­ern Promis­es, while Moore moved on. Then, five years lat­er, total­ly out of the blue, she got a phone call say­ing the project was back on.

Moore insists that any sim­i­lar­i­ties between Havana Seg­rand and any real per­sons are pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal. She does admit, how­ev­er, that a lit­tle piece of her­self did end up on screen. ​“All of Havana’s inse­cu­ri­ties, all of her some­what child­like behav­iour, the phys­i­cal­i­ty of her, is tak­en from every­one we’ve ever seen in the indus­try. Includ­ing myself! There’s def­i­nite­ly some of my own inse­cu­ri­ties in there.” Moore describes play­ing this immense­ly self-involved, extreme­ly com­pli­cat­ed char­ac­ter, who is by turns grotesque and scar­i­ly real, as a ​“com­plete plea­sure.” What real­ly attract­ed her to the role, how­ev­er, wasn’t the wild mood swings and now infa­mous lack of mod­esty, but some­thing she iden­ti­fied with on a deep­er per­son­al level.

“Do you watch America’s Next Top Mod­el?” Nat­u­ral­ly… ​“Okay, so my daugh­ter, who’s 12, and I were watch­ing it the oth­er day, and you know how at the end of each show they tell one of the girls that they’ve been elim­i­nat­ed and the girls all cry? I explained to my daugh­ter that it’s like that for actors, too. You’re just told, ​‘You didn’t get the job’, and you’re sup­posed to move on. It’s real­ly upset­ting. One of the moments [in Maps] I relat­ed to the most was when Havana’s agent calls her and tells her she didn’t get the job. That’s hap­pened a mil­lion times to me. Agents always try to break it to you as del­i­cate­ly as pos­si­ble – they’ll usu­al­ly tell you not to wor­ry and that some­thing bet­ter will come along. The truth is, in that moment, it’s hard to believe that. Rejec­tion can be pret­ty dev­as­tat­ing that way.”

While Havana Seg­rand is clear­ly past her prime, by con­trast Moore is arguably at her peak. In May she picked up the Best Actress award in Cannes, and looks set to build on that suc­cess with upcom­ing roles in Still Alice and The Hunger Games: Mock­ing­jay Parts 1 & 2. You hear a lot of talk these days about how the indus­try doesn’t pro­vide enough oppor­tu­ni­ties for women over 50, how old­er actress­es just aren’t in the pic­ture. After 22 years in the movies, is Moore sim­ply an anom­aly? She offers a dif­fer­ent take.

“Hon­est­ly, I’ve been answer­ing that ques­tion since I was 30 years old,” she says. ​“When I was first start­ing out in the busi­ness, peo­ple were say­ing, ​‘Do you think there’s less oppor­tu­ni­ties for old­er women?’ and I was like, ​‘I don’t know… am I old?” Okay, so what’s her answer to that ques­tion today? ​“When we talk about good roles for actors in Hol­ly­wood, whether it’s for men or women, you have to realise that the so-called busi­ness is not there to pro­duce inter­est­ing roles for actors. Peri­od. It’s there to cre­ate movies that will play and make mon­ey on a glob­al scale. It’s rare with­in those kinds of movies to find good roles for actors. How­ev­er, I do think there are plen­ty of movies out there that are about peo­ple – who we are and what we do – and the things that make us human. You’ve just got to know where to look.”