Demi Moore: Later Oscar triumph for the actress?

At the age of 62, Demi Moore finally gave up hunting for perfection. And finally she gets the appreciation that had been denied so long. For her role in the horror film “The Substance” she got her first Golden Globe, her first Oscar nomination, the SAG Award-and maybe even on March 3rd her first gold boy.

Fittingly, the film also revolves around the hunt for perfection – external, youthful perfection that every woman is not only subject to in Hollywood. As Elizabeth Sparkle, Moore, directed by Coralie Fargeeat (48), fights against aging that threatens to push her out of her career. They were particularly interested in the role “the circumstances of a woman in the entertainment industry, which is confronted with rejection and deep despair. Everything that seemed to be important in her life is torn out”, the parallels to her own career are obvious.

Demi Moore is a living example of Hollywood’s sexism in recent decades. In the 80s and 90s she was admired with films such as “Ghost – Message from Sam” or “An immoral offer” for the superstar – smiled at for her beauty, smiled at for her ambitions. In “A question of honor” and “The acts Jane” she played women who had to fight male power structures – and had to listen to the saying from a producer: “If Tom [Cruise, ihr Kollege in “Eine Frage der Ehre”] And don’t sleep with each other, why is Demi a woman? “

But not only on the canvas, also in her real life, Moore had to struggle with a sexist double standards. Her pregnant body on the cover of the “Vanity Fair” was described as pornographically in 1991 and triggered a scandal. Her fee of twelve million dollars for “striptease” – at that time the highest sum that an actress had ever negotiated – was considered. While her husband Bruce Willis (69) at the time for “Die Slowly” almost conceded the double, she had to put up with headlines like “Gimme Moore”.

But Moore had already had worse things. In her biography “Inside Out” published in 2019, she described her dark childhood with a suicidal mother and a violent father, rape by a “friend of the family” as well as alcohol and cocaine problems and eating disorders. She was dry for 20 years until Ashton Kutcher (47) entered her life, the “concept” of alcohol was considered and brought it back to drink. The marriage of the two – also accompanied by malicious headlines about the age difference of 16 years – ended after six years with the next low in Moore’s life. Kutcher had cheated and humiliated Moore, she had “lost” again ,. And again the fight started: against her public opinion, against her addictions, against her own body.

In the middle of this low point, the script came from “The Substance”. You can see this struggle in your acting performance of “The Substance”. With the body horror film, she for the first time frees herself from the pressure to be beautiful. Her role is getting faster and more terrible, while her young alter ego, played by Margaret Quege (30), mimics the bright beauty. An exemption, as Moore told the “Guardian”: “I was degraded all the time, and I knew from the start that I would not be shown in the most glamorous way, without blur. The opposite was the case. But that had something liberating itself. “

After decades of perfection expectation, Demi Moore shows itself unadorned for the first time – and is celebrated for this. The Golden Globe as the “best leading actress musical/comedy” (of which you shouldn’t be fooled by the brutal satire) took over visibly overwhelmed in January 2025. In her speech, she said that a producer would have descended the title “popcorn actress” and believed her for a long time that there was no more for her. 30 years later, she demonstrated the opposite – not just him, but above all itself.