(Credit: YouTube still)
In the mid-1990s, Demi Moore shattered industry norms when she was paid $12.5million for Striptease, making her the highest-paid woman in Hollywood. However, as Moore later admitted, the fallout was more personal than glamorous. According to The Substance star, she felt as if she betrayed her female fans with Striptease and her male following with GI Jane. However, it also provided Moore with an opportunity to get out of her comfort zone.
Demi Moore said she took “a lot of criticism, a lot of heat, got hit really hard for both of these films,” and her expression still softened when she spoke of that time. Beyond the scrutiny towards the content, even more backlash was brought toward the payday. “While the public perception was hyper-focused on what I was being paid for taking my clothes off, for me it was the intense focus of connecting with my body and myself in a sensual, sexual way, in a way that I’ve never felt before.”
She explained that the role in Striptease forced her to confront a lifetime of discomfort in her own skin. The project helped her accept her own femininity, and it was empowering for her to experience that process. If Striptease reintroduced her to her sexuality, GI Jane allowed her to access her masculine side, proving to be another kind of challenge altogether.
The pressure of public scrutiny ultimately led Demi Moore to retreat from the spotlight and move to Idaho, where she focused on raising her daughters. “When I stepped away from working just to be with my children, I never really thought about the ramifications of defecting from my career.” At the time, her children were aged five to 11, but she didn’t really compare her kids to her career trajectory, because the former always took precedence in her personal pile of priorities.
A child of divorced parents, Moore knew what instability looked like and didn’t want her children to go through anything similar. That’s exactly why she decided to focus on her kids while her Hollywood career took a backseat. While she definitely could have continued cashing in on her worldwide appeal, it’s a decision that she doesn’t regret.
Still, stepping away didn’t come without fear: “The bigger risk was stepping back into this world that I’d left at a point where I’d faced the harshest criticism I’d ever faced. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to come back.”
The return began with Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, a role she accepted before she could even worry about the required garb. However, Moore wasn’t at all concerned about sharing the screen with younger women and the body ideals that are solidified by the Hollywood media machine. Instead, it was about taking a new step forward in her career.
She admitted she had once been obsessive about diet and exercise, especially around the GI Jane era, but ultimately had to let that go. During her hiatus from the industry, Moore was able to take a step back and realise that the idea of the “perfect” female body that is perpetrated by Hollywood leads to some very unhealthy and obsessive thought patterns, which are self-destructive in nature.
Now, Moore says she views even the difficult chapters of her life as fuel. It is her personal experiences and her status as a sex symbol that helped her channel these complex emotions into the modern masterpiece that is The Substance, a fantastic deconstruction of the ageing anxiety that all women, especially those who are in the media industry, deal with on a day-to-day basis.
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