Demi Moore - Career

Career

Demi Moore co-wrote three songs with Freddy Moore and appeared in the music video for their "It's Not a Rumor," performed by his band The Nu Kats. She continues to receive royalty checks from her brief songwriting career (1980-1981).

Moore appeared on the cover of the January 1981 issue of the adult magazine Oui, in which she posed for a series of photographs containing full frontal nudity. In a 1988 interview, Moore claimed she "only posed for the cover of Oui—I was 16; I told them I was 18" and that the photos inside the issue "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."

In October 1981, Moore made her film debut with a supporting role in the low-budget teen drama Choices, directed by Silvio Narizzano. Her second feature was the 1982 3-D science fiction/horror film Parasite, for which director Charles Band had instructed casting director Johanna Ray to "find me the next Karen Allen." Moore gained greater exposure when she joined the cast of the ABC soap opera General Hospital, playing the role of Jackie Templeton from 1982 to 1983. She made an uncredited cameo appearance as a new intern in the 1982 spoof Young Doctors in Love.

Moore's film career took off in 1984 following her appearance in the sex comedy Blame It on Rio. That same year, she played the lead role in No Small Affair. Her commercial breakthrough came in Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire (1985), which received negative reviews but was a box office success. Because of that film, Moore was often listed as part of the Brat Pack, a label she shunned at the time. She progressed to more serious material with About Last Night... (1986), which marked a positive turning point in her career, as she later noted that she started to see better scripts following its release. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film 4 out of 4 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 not rivaled by Moore's other two 1986 releases: One Crazy Summer and Wisdom, the last youth-oriented films she would star in.

Moore made her professional stage debut in an off-Broadway production of The Early Girl, which ran at the Circle Repertory Company in the fall of 1986. In 1988, Moore starred as a prophecy-bearing mother in the apocalyptic drama The Seventh Sign—her first outing as a solo star. The following year, she acted with Robert DeNiro in Neil Jordan's Depression-era allegory We're No Angels (1989), as the quick-witted local laundress and prostitute whose deaf-mute daughter is rescued by an escaped convict masquerading as a priest.

Her most successful film as of 2012 was the supernatural romantic melodrama Ghost, a sleeper hit that grossed $505 million at the box office and was the highest-grossing film of 1990. The love scene between Moore and Patrick Swayze that begins in front of a potter's wheel as the song "Unchained Melody" plays has become an iconic moment in film history. Ghost was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Moore's performance as Molly Jensen garnered her a Golden Globe Award nomination as Best Actress.

In 1991, Moore co-produced and starred in the mystery thriller Mortal Thoughts, and appeared as 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". Both films were box-office disappointments, 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.

By 1995, Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. However, she subsequently had a string of unsuccessful films starting with The Scarlet Letter, a "freely adapted" version of the historical romance novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which her portrayal of Hester Prynne was met with harsh criticism. Despite the poor reception of that film and her follow-up release, The Juror, Moore was paid a record-breaking salary of $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 $113 million worldwide—it failed to reach expectations and was widely considered a flop. Meanwhile, she also produced and starred in a controversial miniseries for HBO called If These Walls Could Talk, a three-part anthology about abortion. Its screenwriter, Nancy Savoca, directed two segments, including one in which Moore played a single woman in the 1950s seeking a back-alley abortion. For that role, Moore received a second Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress.

Moore famously shaved her head in order to play a female Navy SEALS recruit in G.I. Jane (1997), directed by Ridley Scott. The film was a moderate box office success, but its domestic gross was only slightly more than it cost to make. During the film's production, it was reported that Moore had ordered studio chiefs to charter two planes for her and her entourage, 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.

After G.I. Jane, Moore took a low-profile role in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, then left the Hollywood spotlight and moved to Hailey, Idaho on a full-time basis to devote herself to raising her three daughters. She was offscreen for three years before re-emerging in the arthouse drama Passion of Mind (2000). Her performance was critically acclaimed, but the film itself received 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 as the villain of the 2003 film Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, but that was followed by yet another three-year absence. In the interim, Moore signed on as the face of the Versace fashion brand. and then the Helena Rubinstein brand of cosmetics. In 2006, she appeared in Bobby which featured an all-star cast, including her husband Ashton Kutcher, although they did not appear in any scenes together.

Moore reunited with Blame It on Rio co-star Michael Caine for the British crime drama Flawless, which came out in a limited release in 2008 with generally positive reviews. As of 2012, her last appearance in a widely released film was in 2007's Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner. Since then, she has acted in several low-key independent films, including the 2011 corporate drama Margin Call, in which she had a small role.

Moore had been cast to play feminist activist Gloria Steinem in the Linda Lovelace biographical film Lovelace, but within a month of being announced for the role, she dropped out of the production in the wake of a January 23, 2012 hospitalization and what her representative called "professional assistance to treat her exhaustion and improve her overall health." Sarah Jessica Parker took over the role.