Demi Moore or the revenge of a brunette in Hollywood

It’s a story like only Hollywood knows how to tell us. And of which I am a particular customer. And for good reason, all the elements of a good scenario are brought together: scandals, love, failures, a crossing of the desert… And at the end: a reward. A Golden Globe for Demi Moore. And maybe even the Oscar since she has just been nominated in the best actress category. In her couture goddess dress by Armani, the actress made history on January 5. A revenge for the one whose long and prolific career has, in my eyes, rather been shunned. And obviously, to her own as well: “I have been doing this job for over 45 years and this is the first time that I have won something as an actress” she slipped into her speech. In a video shared on Instagram, his daughters let their joy explode in front of their television. A small feeling of pride shared by an entire generation (of which I am part) who saw her breakthrough, then lose her way before this return to grace.

Because Demi Moore, for me, is the complex case of an actress who too quickly saw herself defined by her physique on screen and by her relationships in the city. In Indecent proposal (1993), I found it incandescent. For the teenager that I was in the 90s, she was fighting, like Meg Ryan, for the leading role in the hearts of fans of (more or less) romantic comedies. Or even Julia Roberts, who has fun with it in Love at first sight in Notting Hill (1999): «Je sfoilm strip teasae

“I’m sure Demi will be delighted” she responds to the one who confuses her character as a bankable actress and congratulates her for Ghost (1990), as this film is iconic.

But very quickly, I understood that the actress was not one of those who necessarily follows the rules. Especially when it comes to those in a Hollywood circle where it is not necessarily fashionable to do as one pleases. Even more so when you are a woman.

Thus, Demi Moore dares to give up her long hair the day before the filming of Ghostmuch to the dismay of director Jerry Zucker. And thus offers one of the most cult hairstyles in the history of cinema, which I must confess to having tried with less success. Later, she puts herself in danger in roles that break the codes. She gets naked in Striptease (1996), shaves his head to On equal terms (1997)… Risk-taking, not really paying off. I think back to the harsh critics who pilloried his performance. Or those who preferred to emphasize the “brave” choice of opting for the GI cut. Clearly, his career was hanging by a hair.

Especially since the action is more the business of Bruce Willis, his companion at the time, a true star and icon of the nineties, who has a series of blockbusters while blowing up buildings and the box office. All this while handling both the gun and humor. What about Demi? She invests herself fully in a tailor-made role in the eyes of society: that of mother. In the background, she raised their three daughters, with names unlikely for the French public: Rumer born in 1988, Scout LaRue in 1991 and Tallulah in 1994.

Which does not prevent him, once again, from shaking up the codes. She caused a scandal by posing naked and 7 months pregnant in front of Annie Leibovitz’s lens in August 1991. A photo on the front page of Vanity Fair which led to the magazine being withdrawn from certain newsstands. America is shocked. My grandparents too. Demi Moore, however, liberates the bodies of pregnant women, considered taboo at the time. With this cliché of powerful motherhood, she created a precedent and would subsequently be imitated many times. Again, we should have said thank you.

After crossing the desert and a separation, she returned in a new version of herself in the early 2000s. A scandal at the time, she flirted with an actor sixteen years her junior, Ashton Kutcher, whom she married. in 2005. The same one that my friends and I liked to meet in the evening when coming home from high school in the series That’s Seventies Show. “She’s the cougar who embraces her fifty-something side with the younger, handsome guy. She establishes herself as a mature, liberated woman, a free woman. But not an activist because she has always done things sincerely,” analyzes Vincent Gregoire, Consumer trends & insights director at Nelly Rodi. Before adding: “She has a form of authenticity. We feel that she does things with her guts, with her heart and that she is not calculating.” The media considers it too old? She responds with a weapon of mass seduction: her sculptural body which emerges from the waves in a scene from the remake of Funny Ladies, Charlie’s Angels, where she looks younger than Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz. Like Venus emerging from the waters but revised and corrected with a scalpel.

The world is not ready, still locked in its taboos and contradictions about the female body. Hollywood doesn’t want to see women age. But we cannot tolerate those who, with too much conviction, defy the laws of passing time. She would have had her knees retouched and her breasts plumped up. To top it all off, the romance that finally convinced her ended in a miscarriage and divorce in November 2011 after six years of a highly publicized marriage. And rumors of alcoholism rage.

At the same time, Demi Moore is struggling to convince on the big screen and is attempting some forays into TV series like Empire. It is ultimately Instagram, a network that she joined in 2018, which will then offer her a new space of expression and remind her of our good memories. While celebrities demand and reclaim their privacy, she exposes herself without complexes. Criticism is easy. And then, during confinement, she brings together her tribe, including her ex-husband and his new wife. In the art of the blended family, she succeeds in instilling something cool, free.

It is also through fashion that she returns to the forefront. Kim Jones invites him to take the podium for his first Fendi show in January 2021. Here again, the criticism wins the battle. More than his presence, we emphasize his abuse of surgery. Unless it’s a makeup problem? The futile debate rumbles. When her female counterparts demand their right to age and accept their wrinkles on screen or in photos, she continues to appear in an ultra-sexy bikini on the networks.

In the front row of fashion shows or on the red carpet, she never leaves her chihuahua, Pilaf, and appears with hair too long to be real. Once again, she plays the balancing act again, bordering on the ridiculous, like a sexygenarian version of Paris Hilton. And I don’t really know what to think about it.

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But it’s hard not to get attached. Because of her daily life, she shares almost everything: the little joys (she becomes a grandmother) and the big tragedies (Bruce Willis suffers from aphasia). Always as a family, they stand together. And Demi gains sympathy. “We feel that it is in a kind of gentle, peaceful, benevolent modernity. It moves the lines without claiming new ways of living. She does things for herself, without worrying about what people will say,” underlines the trend-setter.

And then, as if to ward off the reputation of which she was a prisoner, she agrees to play in The Substance. Or the story of a woman willing to do anything not to age. The film impresses at Cannes. And gives it a boost. I find her perfect for the role. “In reality, I don’t see what other actress could have played her as well” adds Vincent Gregoire. In the film by Coralie Fargeat, who chose her after reading her memoirs Inside Out published in 2019, Demi Moore “swings and at the same time, she is vulnerable. She is simultaneously a victim and a mistress. As if taking on on screen what he has always been criticized for in “real” life finally offered him the famous golden ticket. The one that opens the doors to an industry that has always considered her at best as a “popcorn” actress, as she recalled in her speech. At worst like a woman who refuses to age. In the reflection of this mise en abyss, Demi Moore won the recognition of her peers: “When this audacious, courageous and completely crazy scenario arrived on my desk, the universe told me that it was not over for me…” Proof that even for the freest electrons, Hollywood knows how to orchestrate happy endings, especially when it comes to mea culpa.