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Will Idaho’s Demi Moore (Finally) Win An Oscar?
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 05: Demi Moore accepts the Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy award for “The Substance” onstage during the 82nd Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton on January 05, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty Images)
BY KAREN DAY
Amidst a Golden Globe win and a host of other nominations, Demi Moore’s career isn’t without Hollywood’s recognition. But after 45 years in the industry, she waits and wonders—will an Oscar remain elusive?
“I have never had any training, you know…I came from the university of ‘fake it till you make it’,” Moore said at the Sun Valley Film Festival in December 2024, less than one month from her Golden Globe win for “The Substance.”
Moore’s Hollywood debut happened at just 15 years old when she moved into an apartment building in West Hollywood. “I remember looking down and seeing the most extraordinary creature who seemed so comfortable in her own body. I didn’t know who she was, but I knew that I wanted what she had. And we became friends,” Moore recalled.
The girl was German actress Nastassja Kinski, who enlisted Moore’s help reading scripts. “That was my first time diving into this kind of new form of storytelling that I had never been exposed to. I knew nothing about acting, nothing about this world at all,” Moore said. Soon after, she decided this was her path.
Moore went on to make her debut in 1982’s “Parasite,” followed by “General Hospital.” Then, on to Brat Pack fame in “St Elmo’s Fire” (1985), followed by “Ghost” (1990), and “A Few Good Men” (1992), garnering her serious acting praise and the title of the “highest paid actress in Hollywood.” 1991 was also the year of her provocative appearance, naked and nine months pregnant, on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, the second highest grossing magazine cover in the world.
“Do you want to know what was first?” host George Prentice asked the surprised actress on stage. “John Lennon and Yoko in bed.”
Moore shrugged. A Wood River Valley resident since her eldest daughter was in kindergarten, she credits much of her nonchalance to celebrity to living in Idaho. “I wasn’t an LA person and at a certain point, I said to Bruce (Willis), ‘most of our work is not even in LA, what are we doing?’”
Moore said the move was the smartest and best thing they ever did. “We became just a part of the fabric of this community,” she said.
At age 60, Moore received the script for “ The Substance,” where she plays a 50-year-old beauty willing to injure herself to stay young. The irony is not lost on the actress, who noted that, after 45 years, her recent Golden Globe is her first ‘big’ award.
“30 years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress,’ and at that time, I made that mean that this is not something I was allowed to have. That I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in and I believed that. That corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it, maybe I was complete, maybe I had done what I was supposed to do,” Moore noted in her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. “And as I was at kind of a low point, 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 that ‘you’re not done.'"
