Demi Moore Biography

Demi Gene Guynes</ref> or Demi. Moore says the latter.|group=n|name=born}} (born November 11, 1962), professionally known as Demi Moore ( ), is an American actress, former songwriter, and model. Moore dropped out of high school at age 16 to pursue an acting career and appeared in the men's pornographic magazine Oui in 1981. After making her film debut later that year, she appeared on the soap opera General Hospital and subsequently gained recognition as a member of the Brat Pack with roles in Blame It on Rio (1984), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), and About Last Night... (1986).

Her starring role in Ghost (1990), the highest-grossing film of that year, earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She continued to find box-office success in the early 1990s, with the films A Few Good Men (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), and Disclosure (1994). In 1996, Moore became the highest-paid actress in film history when she received a then-unprecedented US$12.5 million to star in Striptease, a commercial success but a major critical disappointment. Her next major role, G.I. Jane (1997), for which she famously shaved her head, was followed by a lengthy break and downturn in Moore's career. Her later film roles include Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Bobby (2006), Mr. Brooks (2007), and Margin Call (2011).

Besides acting, her personal life has been the subject of significant media coverage, particularly her marriages to actors Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher.

Early life

She was born Demi Gene Harmon on November 11, 1962, in Roswell, New Mexico. Her biological father, Air Force airman Charles Harmon, Sr., left her mother, Virginia (ne King), after a two-month marriage before Moore was born. When Moore was three months old, her mother married Dan Guynes, a newspaper advertising salesman who frequently changed jobs. As a result, the family moved many times. Moore said in 1991, "My dad was Dan Guynes. He raised me. There is a man who would be considered my biological father who I don't really have a relationship with."

Moore suffered from strabismus as a child. This was ultimately corrected by two operations. She also suffered from kidney dysfunction. Moore learned of her biological father, Harmon, at age 13, when she found her mother and stepfather's marriage certificate and inquired about the circumstances since she "saw my parents were married in February 1963. I was born in '62."

At age 15, Moore moved to West Hollywood, California, where her mother worked for a magazine distribution company. Moore attended Fairfax High School there, and recalled, "I moved out of my family's house when I was 16 and left high school in my junior year." She signed with the Elite Modeling Agency and went to Europe to work as a pin-up girl, then enrolled in drama classes after being inspired by her next-door neighbor, 17-year-old German actress Nastassja Kinski. In August 1979, three months before her 17th birthday, Moore met musician Freddy Moore who was married and at the time leader of the band Boy, at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour. They lived in an apartment in West Hollywood.

Dan Guynes committed suicide in October 1980 at age 37, two years after he separated from Moore's mother. Demi's mother had a long record of arrests for crimes, including drunk driving and arson. Moore broke off contact with her in 1990, when Guynes walked away from a rehab stay Moore had paid for at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota. Guynes posed nude for the magazine High Society in 1993, where she spoofed Moore's Vanity Fair pregnancy and bodypaint covers and parodied her love scene from the film Ghost. Moore and Guynes briefly reconciled shortly before Guynes died of cancer in July 1998 at age 54.

Career

Beginnings (1980-1983)

Demi Moore co-wrote three songs with Freddy Moore and appeared in the music video for their selection "It's Not a Rumor," performed by his band, The Nu Kats. She continues to receive royalty checks from her brief songwriting work (1980-81). Moore was not known, as of late October 2018, to have expressed any desire to pursue a singing career, though she did sing in the films One Crazy Summer and Bobby.

Moore also appeared on the cover of the January 1981 issue of the adult magazine Oui, taken from a photo session in which she had posed nude. In a 1988 interview, Moore claimed she "only posed for the cover of Oui"?I was 16; I told them I was 18". Interviewer Alan Carter said, "However, some peekaboo shots did appear inside. And later, nude shots of her turned up in Celebrity Sleuth"?photos that she once said 'were for a European fashion magazine'." In 1990, she told another interviewer, "I was 17 years old. I was underage. It was just the cover."

Moore made her film debut with a brief role in the 1981 teen drama Choices, directed by Silvio Narizzano. Her second film feature was the 3-D sci-fi horror film Parasite (1982), for which director Charles Band had instructed casting director Johanna Ray to "find me the next Karen Allen." Moore then joined the cast of the ABC soap opera General Hospital, playing the role of an investigative reporter until 1983. During her tenure on the series, she made an uncredited cameo appearance in the 1982 spoof film Young Doctors in Love.

International stardom (1984-1994)

Moore's film career took off in 1984 following her appearance in the sex comedy Blame It on Rio. Her other 1984 film was the comedy No Small Affair. Her commercial breakthrough came in Joel Schumacher's yuppie drama St. Elmo's Fire (1985), which received negative reviews, but was a box office success and brought Moore to international recognition. Because of her association with that film, Moore was often listed as part of the Brat Pack, a label she felt was "demeaning". She progressed to more serious material with About Last Night... (1986), co-starring Rob Lowe, which marked a positive turning point in her career, as Moore noted that, following its release, she began seeing better scripts. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and praised her performance, writing, "There isn't a romantic note she isn't required to play in this movie, and she plays them all flawlessly." The success of About Last Night... was unrivaled by Moore's other two 1986 releases, One Crazy Summer and Wisdom, the last youth-oriented films in which she would star.

Moore made her professional stage debut in an off-Broadway production of The Early Girl, which ran at the Circle Repertory Company in fall 1986. In 1988, Moore starred as a prophecy-bearing mother in the apocalyptic drama The Seventh Sign"?her first outing as a solo film star"? and in 1989, she played the quick-witted local laundress and prostitute in Neil Jordan's Depression-era allegory We're No Angels, opposite Robert De Niro.

Her most successful film to date is the supernatural romantic melodrama Ghost (1990), which grossed over US$505 million at the box office and was the highest-grossing film of the year. She played a young woman in jeopardy to be protected by the ghost of her murdered lover. The love scene between Moore and Patrick Swayze that starts in front of a potter's wheel to the sound of "Unchained Melody" has become an iconic moment in cinema history. Ghost was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Moore's performance earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination.

In 1991, Moore starred in the horror comedy Nothing but Trouble, co-produced and appeared in the mystery thriller Mortal Thoughts, and played a blonde for the first time in the romantic comedy The Butcher's Wife, with Roger Ebert's review describing her as "warm and cuddly". Those films were not widely seen, but Moore sustained her A-list status with her starring roles in Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men (1992), Adrian Lyne's Indecent Proposal (1993), and Barry Levinson's Disclosure (1994)"?all of which opened at #1 at the box office and were blockbuster hits.

Critical failures and hiatus (1995-2009)

By 1995, Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. However, critical acclaim subsequently began to wane with her subsequent film releases; her portrayal of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (1995), a "freely adapted" version of the historical romance novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was met with harsh criticism. While the coming-of-age drama Now and Then (1995) found moderate box office success, the thriller The Juror (1996) was heavily panned by critics. Moore was paid a record-breaking salary of US$12.5 million in 1996 to star in Striptease. Much hype was made about Moore's willingness to dance topless for the part, though this was the sixth time she had shown her breasts on film. Although the film was actually a financial success"?grossing over US$113 million worldwide"?it failed to reach expectations and was widely considered a flop and Moore received the booby prize for Worst Actress.

Moore produced and starred in a controversial miniseries for HBO called If These Walls Could Talk (1996), a three-part anthology about abortion alongside Sissy Spacek and Cher. Its screenwriter, Nancy Savoca, directed two segments, including one in which Moore played a widowed nurse in the early 1950s seeking a back-alley abortion. For that role, Moore received a second Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress. Also in 1996, she provided the speaking voice of the beautiful Esmeralda in Disney's animated adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and starred in Mike Judge's comedy Beavis and Butt-head Do America, alongside her then husband Bruce Willis.

Moore famously shaved her head to play the first woman to undergo training in the Navy SEAL in Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane (1997). Budgeted at US$50 million, the film was a moderate commercial success, with a worldwide gross of US$97.1 million. During the film's production, it was reported that Moore had ordered studio chiefs to charter two planes for her entourage and her, which reinforced her negative reputation for being a diva"?she had previously turned down the Sandra Bullock role in While You Were Sleeping because the studio refused to meet her salary demands, and was dubbed "Gimme Moore" by the media. Moore took on the role of an ultrapious psychiatrist in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, also in 1997.

After G.I. Jane, Moore retreated from the spotlight and moved to Hailey, Idaho, on a full-time basis to devote herself to raising her three daughters. She was off screen for three years before re-emerging in the arthouse psychological drama Passion of Mind (2000), the first English-language film from Belgian director Alain Berliner. Her performance as a woman with multiple personality disorder was well received, but the film itself garnered mixed reviews and was deemed "naggingly slow" by some critics. Moore then resumed her self-imposed career hiatus and continued to turn down film offers. Producer Irwin Winkler said in 2001, "I had a project about a year and a half ago, and we made an inquiry about her"?a real good commercial picture. She wasn't interested."

Another three years passed before Moore acted again. She returned to the screen, playing a villain in the 2003 film Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, opposite Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. A commercial success, the film made US$259.1 million worldwide, and Rolling Stone, on Moore's role, remarked: "It's a relief when Demi Moore shows up as fallen angel [...] Moore, 40, looks great in a bikini and doesn"?t even try to act. Her unsmiling sexiness cuts through the gigglefest as the angels fight, kick, dance and motocross like Indiana Jones clones on estrogen". The film was followed by yet another three-year absence. In the interim, Moore signed on as the face of the Versace fashion brand and the Helena Rubinstein brand of cosmetics.

Moore portrayed an alcoholic singer whose career is on the downswing, as part of an ensemble cast, in Emilio Estevez's drama Bobby (2006), about the hours leading up to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. As a member of the cast, she was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Cast in a Motion Picture but won the Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Ensemble Cast. She played a grieving and tormented novelist in the mystery thriller Half Light (also 2006).

Moore took on the role of a driven police officer investigating a serial killer in 2007's Mr. Brooks, with Kevin Costner. The New York Times found her performance to be "the most wooden" of her career, writing: "Looking exhausted and tense, the actress is as expressive as a wax museum effigy". Mr. Brooks made US$48.1 million worldwide, and was Moore's last widely released film until 2017. She reunited with Blame It on Rio co-star Michael Caine for the British crime drama Flawless (2008), which saw her portray an American executive helping to steal a handful of diamonds from the London Diamond Corporation during the 1960s. While the film found a limited release in theaters, Moore received positive reviews from critics; Miami Herard wrote: "The inspired pairing of Demi Moore and Michael Caine as a pair of thieves in the diamond-heist semi-caper movie Flawless goes a long way toward overcoming the film's slack, leisurely pacing".

Recent works (2010-present)

After Mr. Brooks, Moore has since acted mainly in independent films. In 2010, Moore took on the role of a daughter helping her father deal with age-related health problems in the dramedy Happy Tears, opposite Parker Posey and Rip Torn, and starred as the matriarch of a family moving into a suburban neighborhood in the comedy The Joneses, with David Duchovny. The latter film was largely highlighted upon its theatrical release, with critics concluding that it "benefits from its timely satire of consumer culture "? as well as a pair of strong performances" from Duchovny and Moore. In Bunraku (2010), a film Moore described as a "big action adventure," she played a courtesan and a femme fatale with a secret past. Moore portrayed a chief risk management officer at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the financial crisis of 2007-08 in the critically acclaimed corporate drama Margin Call (2011), where she was part of an ensemble cast that included Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, and Paul Bettany. The cast garnered nominations for the "Best Ensemble" award from the Gotham Awards, the Phoenix Film Critics Society and the Central Ohio Film Critics Association. Also in 2011, Moore received a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for Outstanding Directing - Miniseries or TV Film for her work as a director in a segment of the 2011 Lifetime anthology film Five, and starred opposite Ellen Barkin, Ellen Burstyn and George Kennedy in Sam Levinson's black comedy Another Happy Day, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Moore appeared as the mother of a troubled teen in LOL (2012), with Miley Cyrus. The film had a limited release, and was critically and commercially unsuccessful. She played a similar mother role in her next film, the likewise coming-of-age dramedy Very Good Girls (2013), which co-starred Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen.

Her part as an old flame of a quick-draw killer in the Western drama Forsaken (2015), with Donald Sutherland and Kiefer Sutherland, was followed by the role of the daughter of a retired high school teacher in the road comedy Wild Oats, with Shirley MacLaine and Jessica Lange, which premiered on Lifetime in August 2016, and in a limited release the following month. In her next film, the drama Blind (2016), Moore starred opposite Alec Baldwin, portraying the neglected wife of an indicted businessman having an affair with a novelist blinded in a car crash. In February 2017, Moore joined the cast of Empire, in the recurring role of a take-charge nurse with a mysterious past. The comedy Rough Night (2017), in which she acted alongside Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Zo Kravitz and Ty Burrell, featured Moore as one half of a nymphomaniac couple seducing a member of a bachelorette party gone wrong. Her first widely released film since Mr. Brooks (2007), Rough Night was a moderate commercial success.

Vanity Fair cover

In August 1991, Moore appeared nude on the cover of Vanity Fair under the title More Demi Moore. Annie Leibovitz shot the picture while Moore was seven months pregnant with the second of her three daughters, Scout LaRue Willis, intending to portray "anti-Hollywood, anti-glitz" attitude. The cover drew a lot of attention, being discussed on television, radio, and in newspaper articles. The frankness of Leibovitz's portrayal of a pregnant sex symbol led to divided opinions, ranging from suggestions of sexual objectification to celebrations of the photograph as a symbol of empowerment.

The photograph was subject to numerous parodies, including the Spy Magazine version, which placed Moore's then-husband Bruce Willis's head on her body. In Leibovitz v. Paramount Pictures Corp., Leibovitz sued over one parody featuring Leslie Nielsen, made to promote the 1994 film Naked Gun 33?: The Final Insult. In the parody, the model's body was attached to what is described as "the guilty and smirking face" of Nielsen. The teaser said "Due this March." The case was dismissed in 1996 because the parody relied "for its comic effect on the contrast between the original." In November 2009, the Moroccan magazine Femmes du Maroc emulated the infamous pose with Moroccan news reporter Nadia Larguet, causing controversy in the majority-Muslim nation.

In August 1992, Moore again appeared nude on the cover of Vanity Fair, this time modeling for body painting artist Joanne Gair in Demi's Birthday Suit.

Personal life

Marriages and relationships

On February 8, 1980, at the age of 17, she married singer Freddy Moore, 12 years her senior and recently divorced from his first wife, Lucy. During their marriage, Demi began using Freddy's surname as her stage name. She filed for divorce in September 1984; it was finalized on August 7, 1985.

Moore was then engaged to actor Emilio Estevez, with whom she co-starred in Wisdom, a crime drama he also wrote and directed. The pair planned to marry in December 1986, but called off the engagement.

On November 21, 1987, Moore married her second husband, actor Bruce Willis. She and Willis have three daughters together: Rumer (born August 16, 1988), Scout (born July 20, 1991), and Tallulah (born February 3, 1994). They announced their separation on June 24, 1998, and filed for divorce on October 18, 2000.

Moore had a three-year relationship with martial arts instructor Oliver Whitcomb, whom she dated from 1999 to 2002.

In 2003, Moore began dating actor Ashton Kutcher, who is 15 years younger. They married on September 24, 2005. The wedding was attended by about 150 close friends and family of the couple, including Willis. In November 2011, after months of media speculation about the state of the couple's marriage, Moore announced her decision to end her marriage to Kutcher. After over a year of separation, Kutcher filed for divorce from Moore on December 21, 2012, in Los Angeles Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences. Moore filed her response papers in March 2013, requesting spousal support and payment of legal fees from Kutcher. On November 27, 2013, their divorce was finalized.

Interests

She is a follower of Philip Berg's Kabbalah Centre religion, and initiated Kutcher into the faith, having said that she "didn't grow up Jewish, but [...] would say that [she has] been more exposed to the deeper meanings of particular rituals than any of [her] friends that did."

According to The New York Times, Moore is "the world's most high-profile doll collector", and among her favorites is the Gene Marshall fashion doll. At one point, Moore kept a separate residence to house her 2,000 dolls.

While she landed on PETA's Worst-Dressed List in 2009 for wearing fur, two years later she supported the group's efforts to ban circus workers' use of bullhooks on elephants.

Activism

In 2009, Moore and Kutcher launched The Demi and Ashton Foundation (DNA), a nonprofit, non-governmental organization directed towards fighting child sexual slavery. Its first campaign was "Real Men Don't Buy Girls." In November 2012, the foundation said it was announcing "a new name and refined mission" as Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, which aimed "to disrupt and deflate the predatory behavior of those who abuse and traffic children, solicit sex with children or create and share child pornography".

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1981	Choices	Corri
1982	Parasite	Patricia Welles
	Young Doctors in Love	New intern	Uncredited
1984	Blame It on Rio	Nicole "Nikki" Hollis
	No Small Affair	Laura Victor
1985	St. Elmo's Fire	Jules
1986	About Last Night...	Debbie
	One Crazy Summer	Cassandra Eldridge
	Wisdom	Karen Simmons
1988	The Seventh Sign	Abby Quinn
1989	We're No Angels	Molly
1990	Ghost	Molly Jensen
1991	Nothing but Trouble	Diane Lightson
	Mortal Thoughts	Cynthia Kellogg	Also producer
	The Butcher's Wife	Marina Lemke
1992	A Few Good Men	LCDR JoAnne Galloway
1993	Indecent Proposal	Diana Murphy
1994	Disclosure	Meredith Johnson
1995	The Scarlet Letter	Hester Prynne
	Now and Then	Samantha Albertson (older)	Also producer
1996	The Juror	Annie Laird
	The Hunchback of Notre Dame	Esmeralda	Voice
	Striptease	Erin Grant
	If These Walls Could Talk	Claire Donnelly	Also producer
	Beavis and Butt-Head Do America	Dallas Grimes	Voice
1997	G.I. Jane	Lieutenant Jordan O'Neil	Also producer
	Deconstructing Harry	Helen
2000	Passion of Mind	Martha / Marty
2002	The Hunchback of Notre Dame II	Esmeralda	Voice
2003	Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle	Madison Lee
2006	Half Light	Rachel Carlson
	Bobby	Virginia Fallon
2007	Mr. Brooks	Detective Tracy Atwood
2008	Flawless	Laura Quinn
2010	Happy Tears	Laura
	The Joneses	Kate Jones
	Bunraku	Alexandra
2011	Margin Call	Sarah Robertson
	Another Happy Day	Patty
2012	LOL	Anne
2013	Very Good Girls	Kate
2015	Forsaken	Mary-Alice Watson
2016	Wild Oats	Crystal
	Blind	Suzanne Dutchman
2017	Rough Night	Lea
2018	Love Sonia	Selma
2019	Corporate Animals	Lucy

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1982-83	General Hospital	Jackie Templeton	Cast member
1984	The Master	Holly Trumbull	Episode: "Max"
	Bedrooms	Nancy	Sketch comedy
1987	The New Homeowner's Guide to Happiness	Sandy Darden	Television special
1989	Moonlighting	Woman in Elevator	Episode: "When Girls Collide"
1990	Tales from the Crypt	Cathy Marno	Episode: "Dead Right"
1997	Ellen	The Sample Lady	Episode: "The Puppy Episode"; uncredited
	Destination Anywhere	Janie	Television film
2003	Will & Grace	Sissy Palmer-Ginsburg	Episode: "Women and Children First"
2017	Empire	Claudia	Recurring
2018	The Comedy Central Roast	Herself	Episode: "Bruce Willis"?
2018	Animals	The General	Recurring

Director

Year	Title	Notes
2008	Streak	Short
2011	Five	TV, segment "Charlotte"

Awards and nominations

The following is a list of accolades Moore has received throughout her career:

Year	Title	Accolade	Category	Results
1991	Ghost	Golden Globe Award	Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical
		Saturn Award	Best Actress
1992	The Butcher's Wife Nothing But Trouble	Golden Raspberry Award	Worst Actress
1993	A Few Good Men	MTV Movie + TV Award	Best Female Performance
		People's Choice Award	Favorite Motion Picture Actress
			Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture Actress
	Indecent Proposal	The Stinkers Bad Movie Award	Worst Actress
1994		Golden Raspberry Award	Worst Actress
		MTV Movie + TV Award	Best Female Performance
			Most Desirable Female
			Best Kiss (shared with Woody Harrelson)
1995	Disclosure		Most Desirable Female
			Best Villain
		ShoWest Convention Award	Female Star of the Year
	The Scarlet Letter	The Stinkers Bad Movie Award	Worst Actress
1996	The Hunchback of Notre Dame	Annie Award	Best Individual Achievement - Voice Acting
	The Scarlet Letter	Golden Raspberry Award	Worst Actress
			Worst Screen Couple (shared with Gary Oldman)
		MTV Movie + TV Award	Most Desirable Female
		People's Choice Award	Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture Actress
	The Juror Striptease	The Stinkers Bad Movie Award	Worst Actress
1997	If These Walls Could Talk	Golden Globe Award	Best Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television
	The Juror Striptease	Golden Raspberry Award	Worst Actress
	Striptease		Worst Screen Couple (shared with Burt Reynolds)
	If These Walls Could Talk	Primetime Emmy Award	Outstanding Made for Television Movie
	Striptease	Yoga Award	Worst Foreign Actress
1998	G.I. Jane	Golden Raspberry Award	Worst Actress
		MTV Movie + TV Award	Best Fight (shared with Viggo Mortensen)
2001	Passion of Mind	Golden Raspberry Award	Worst Actress
2003	The Hunchback of Notre Dame	DVD Exclusive Award	Best Animated Character Performance
		MTV Movie + TV Award	Best Villain
		MTV Movie Award Mexico	Sexiest She-Villain
2006	Bobby	Hollywood Film Festival Award	Ensemble of the Year
2007		Critics Choice Movie Award	Best Acting Ensemble
		Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
2011	Margin Call	Gotham Award	Best Ensemble Performance
		Phoenix Film Critics Society Award	Best Ensemble Acting
2012		Central Ohio Film Critics Association Award	Best Ensemble
	Five	Directors Guild Award	Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television/Miniseries
	Margin Call	Independent Spirit Award	Ensemble Cast

Footnotes