Julianne Moore - Interviews

Interview

JULIANNE MOORE

Reeking of class, Julianne Moore has spent her twenty-year career deftly switching between Hollywood and independent movies. Nominated four times for an Oscar, she is as comfortable being chased by dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's The Lost World as she is working for such auteurs as Robert Altman, Todd Haynes and Paul Thomas Anderson. In Joseph Ruben's sci-fi chiller The Forgotten - which took an impressive $66 million on its US theatrical release - she plants herself firmly on studio soil, albeit in a genre she is new to. She plays Telly, a grieving mother who is informed by her psychiatrist that she entirely invented the existence of her late child. The role has seen her nominated for her first Saturn award for The Forgotten, courtesy of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Film. Perhaps the natural redhead from North Carolina has a new career as a scream queen.

Are there any cut scenes from The Forgotten you'd like to see restored to the DVD?
Dominic [West] was so upset that our kiss was cut out. He was devastated. My husband was there when we saw it screened, and I said to him 'They cut out the kiss. Dominic's so upset.' And my husband said 'That's good. Because it is disgusting!'

The film deals with memory blockage. Is that a subject that audiences react to?
Yeah. A lot of people have been talking about the theme of memory and amnesia in films, and you see it often in movies because it's something people do fear. They do think 'Who are we but the sum of our experiences and relationships?' If you take those things away, then suddenly you have no identity. You don't know who you are in the world. So it plays out as peoples' nightmares. This character, Telly, is virtually an archetype. She is any parent. She is what any of us would do. We all have the same universal conflicts and emotions. She is the person you project upon and say, 'Yeah, that's what I would do for my family.'

The film was made in New York. Was that an advantage to shoot in your own back yard?
Like anybody, you love to work at home. It's just great to be able to continue your life and not interrupt your children and husband's lives. Everything goes on as normal, so it's like having a regular job. The best thing for me and my life is to have as little disruption in my personal life as possible. My kids have been great, and they'll come with me anywhere. But my son is in first grade now I don't want to interrupt his school year. My husband is working on a film of his own now. Everyone has their own thing going on. And you want to have a regular life. I concentrate pretty well wherever. As long as my home life is stable and happy, then I'm fine.

Do you often choose jobs partly based on the location?
Yeah! My poor manager and agent. I'm like 'Does it shoot in New York? When does it shoot? If it shoots in Canada, can it shoot in the summertime? I can't go to Europe until school's out.' There's always that. Trying to figure out how to do that stuff. That's literally what I'm doing.

From Boogie Nights to Far From Heaven and now The Forgotten, you've played a lot of mothers. What's the attraction?
They've been good parts. Most of us grow up, get married and have children. That's part of the whole human drama. It's not something that's unusual in life.

You have to do a lot of running in this movie. Hard work?
No! That was fun and easy. You have a day where you don't have to cry or talk. It's easier to run back and forth.

Do you prefer studios films like The Forgotten or more independent fare?
I do stuff that interests me. . One supports the other in a way. Getting art-house films financed, maybe it'll be easier now The Forgotten has been a big success. Then in a way my art-world work will get me a job like this too. Everything goes hand-in-hand and I'm lucky to have the opportunity to do both kinds of movies. I'm grateful...I'm grateful for any of it. You mentioned your husband, Bart Freundlich, is working on a new film. What's it about?
It's called Trust the Man and it's a romantic comedy about two couples in downtown Manhattan. I play an actress married to David Duchovny, who's working on a Broadway play. It's really about our relationship and our relationship to my brother - Billy Crudup - and his girlfriend, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Given that you starred in Bart's earlier films The Myth of Fingerprints and World Traveller, was it always a definite that you'd take a role in this?
It wasn't a given with this one. He wrote it and I knew there was this part in it. I was not the first person he offered it to. He actually offered it to another actress and she passed. And I said 'I really like the part.' Has there been a high-point so far that you look back on and think that's where your career changed direction?
You never feel that way, because you always feel it's very ephemeral. It can disappear too. The minute you feel complacent about anything in your life, and take it for granted...I just don't think there's anything that's a sure thing. Unless you keep at it and appreciate it, I feel like it could all be nothing. Are you a late bloomer in your career?
Yes and no. We measure success in these cultures publicly. People say 'Are you sorry you became a movie star so late in life?' Jesus Christ! It's not like I'm dead! And also, it's not like I wasn't working. I have worked steadily since I was 22, which to me was a miracle. I always had a job. I'd be on the soap, doing a play or doing this or that. My career has always been incremental. I was always working. I never considered myself, just because I wasn't a wildly famous movie star aged 27...I started working in films at 30, which seems completely appropriate. I do think of myself of working steadily. Is it true you were once told you weren't beautiful enough to act in movies?
Oh yeah. They tell you. It's not like it's any secret. You weren't pretty enough. They went with a prettier girl, or someone taller or someone more famous. Or she was better than you. You hear this again and again. And it's true. There's always going to be someone prettier. There really is. Or somebody who doesn't think you're pretty, because beauty is such a subjective thing. You are not a fan, then, of Hollywood beauty queens?
This look that people are going after these days...everybody looks exactly alike. All the lips look alike and it's long straight hair...it's just not human.

If you walk into a room, and you see someone who's beautiful, they look different than anyone you've ever seen before. . You think 'Wow, you look like nothing I've ever seen.' And it's all different. It's upsetting to me that we're promoting an aesthetic that is not what we look like. Does it bother you now if you don't get a part because of your looks?
Who cares? Seriously. It takes a long time to get there. I'm 44 now. If somebody says, I don't really like the way she looks, what the hell am I going to do about it? I'm not going to do anything about it. My husband thinks I look great, which I still find astonishing! So much emphasis is put on what you look like, rather than who you are. What somebody has to say, what they have to contribute. Even all this whole thing about celebrity now. That celebrity is only about notoriety and not about achievement, which I think is really dangerous. You have all those kids growing up, saying I want to be famous. You say, 'Being famous isn't anything. What are you going to be? Are you going to be a scientist, a writer, a race car driver? Be something. Don't be famous because that's not a goal.' What distracts you from acting?
I like architecture and interior design. Our house is just about done. We did a loft. We lived in one building and we were expecting another child, and there was an apartment upstairs that was available. It was the first time I'd really renovated something. My brother-in-law's an architect and we did it together and we finished it and realised we weren't loft people. It was too big! We'd all be hunched around this cantilevered counter in this big space. I always wanted a townhouse in New York. I kept looking. And one Christmas, my estate agent called and said 'Go look at this house.' I didn't like the outside but inside it was just perfect. It was built in 1839, but it needed a big overhaul. You recently caused a furore when you posed semi-nude for W magazine. Any idea why?
I didn't understand. It's American Puritanical...it was crazy. I'm lying on a couch face down. You see the outline of my body and that's it. Clearly something was picked up on the wire service and people were asking me about it. The other day, somebody told me they'd heard Gwyneth Paltrow is retiring. I said: 'It's not true and don't believe anything you've read.' She'd made a joke and they took it and ran with it. There's a certain amount of subjectivity in everything and you have to make decisions for your self. People don't have your best interests at heart all the time. You can't just listen to what's been said to you. Did you ever consider doing social work instead of acting, like your mother?
Not social work. But I still think I might have had a really nice career in medicine. I would've enjoyed that. I would've had to have made a decision when I went to college, and at that point I made a decision to be an actress. I always had an interest in it, from the time I was little. It would've made my mother very happy!