Demi Moore: A Matter of Substance

After more than four decades in the industry, Demi Moore has earned her first Oscar nomination for her lead role in Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance.” But you won’t hear much about it from her. 

“It’s unreal and wonderful. I feel this hesitance to even respond to it, almost,” she tells us, calling in from Paris just days after the Academy announced this year’s nominees. “I don’t know if that’s superstition or just a sense of: Don’t make this a big deal.” 

Moore’s well-deserved recognition is a pleasant surprise erupting from the unlikeliest of Oscar-nominated films. “The Substance” is a gonzo body-horror bloodfest—think a 1980s Cronenberg movie with the jet-fueled propulsion of a TikTok video. Moore grounds the film as Elisabeth Sparkle, a Hollywood star–turned–fitness icon whose career hits a brick wall as soon as she turns 50. 

Desperate, she turns to a black-market drug that produces a younger version of herself named Sue (played to great effect by Margaret Qualley). The catch? Only one woman can be conscious at a time, and they must trade off every seven days or risk suffering mysterious side effects. When they don’t, the story gets…gooey. What emerges is the film’s final horrific creation, courtesy of special makeup effects designer Pierre Olivier Persin: an unholy melding of both women called “Monstro Elisasue.” 

Moore’s remarkable performance—a largely wordless burst of vulnerability and rage—also earned nominations at the BAFTAs, SAG Awards, and Film Independent Spirit Awards, plus a Golden Globe win. So whether the actor can voice it aloud or not, it is a pretty big deal. 

Here, she reflects on her evolution as a performer, the greatest challenges of filming “The Substance,” and how she’s staying grounded during this monumental moment. 

When did an Oscar nomination start to feel like a real possibility? 

I left that to others, as opposed to it being my focus or my intention. This is the biggest award for our industry; and in a way, it’s kind of everything and nothing. That’s a weird thing to say, but it’s because it does, in some ways, mean everything; but at the same time, at ground zero, you don’t make choices based on that being the goal. That’s the way for it not to work out. When you stay on a path that’s authentic to you and you’re doing meaningful, memorable work—speaking for myself, at least—that’s my drive.

I want to back up to get a sense of who you are as an actor and how you arrived at this point in your career. You didn’t have any formal training; how did you develop what you do onscreen?

I learned from other actors. I learned from watching, listening, and experiencing. The downside is that it doesn’t necessarily give you a foundation for how your instrument works. If you think of it as planting a tree and having roots and [learning to] know yourself—in particular, how your instrument works—I didn’t have that. 

I often felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants, and I didn’t know how I got to certain places. As I’ve matured—not just as an artist, but as a person—and have had the opportunity to do more one-on-one work, it’s deepened not just my work, but also my confidence in utilizing my instrument in a different way.

I definitely went to the university of “fake it till you make it.” I was almost afraid to be in an acting class. There was some weird psychology—I’m talking about when I was really, really young—where I thought that if I went to an audition, there could be a variety of reasons why it didn’t work out. That way, I could prepare myself for rejection. Maybe they wanted somebody blond; maybe they wanted somebody taller. But in a class, I somehow made up this thing that if the teacher said, “Oh, my God. You’re awful, and you shouldn’t be doing this,” I would never have a chance.

I’ve come to realize that was just an absolute misunderstanding that I created. I really do encourage [young actors] to go explore. Especially if your path is more in television or film, we usually only get the opportunity to work on our craft when we’re actually hired for a job. 

Is there anything you picked up during that “fake it till you make it” phase that you still fall back on today? 

The observation and the listening still exist for me. I love watching my fellow actors work; I love knowing what their process is, because we’re all so unique. It’s just interesting information, watching other people.

With “The Substance,” I really took the time. I worked with [acting coach] Greta Seacat, and we literally went through the script page by page and did a super deep dive, particularly because I had very little dialogue. For most of my scenes, I had to
create a way of being in dialogue with myself; I didn’t have the luxury of feeding off another actor.

In the arc of this story, because it goes so big, somebody had to be the anchor to reality, and that was going to be Elisabeth Sparkle. She had to anchor [the audience’s] connection, our humanness, so that the movie could be allowed to go to these enormous, wild places. I wanted to know that I would be alive in my thinking and that those thoughts were actually me in conversation with myself when I was in silence.

“The Substance” took you out of your comfort zone. As an artist, how do you balance wanting to do something different with the fact that the people in charge usually want you to do the same thing you’ve already done?  

Part of that is recognizing when those moments come up, because our industry, for an actor, can be very feast or famine. So there are those moments when an offer comes in and it feels repetitive of what you’ve [already] done, or you don’t feel like it’s going to really push you to grow or challenge you. It’s about having the strength and the courage and the power to say no, and taking the risk of there not being another job.

But it’s really a leap of faith, which is why I think having outlets between [gigs] where you’re continuing to work as an actor—whether it’s in scenes, scene studies, or workshops—keeps you fresh and ready. So when that thing comes that sparks a deeper place of excitement and a little fear, in the good way, you’re ready to take on that challenge. I think we grow up with this idea of: I’ll believe it when I see it. But I’ll see it when I believe it.

In a recent interview with Variety, you said that “roles find us as much as we find them.” How do you judge whether a project has found you at the right time?

The barometer is that there may be something you’re passionate about that you really want to make happen, but the experience is not unfolding with ease and grace. There’s a difference between working hard and trying to force something to happen. It’s trying to put a square peg in a round hole. When something’s right, there is a sense of it unfolding with ease and grace. And I’m not saying you’re just floating through it. You may be working hard, putting in long hours, and having to put in the effort, but things continue to move with forward momentum. 

You met with Coralie six times before signing on to play Elisabeth. As an actor, what did you look for during those pre-project conversations? 

There was a little bit of a need for reassurance on where the [tonal] balance was going to be, because I felt like the subject matter was sensitive and important, and I didn’t want it to get overpowered or lost. And then, obviously, the vulnerability of it all—physically, emotionally. So it was a lot of just hearing how Coralie wanted to tell this story, because it was such a personal story for her, and getting it to the point where she was even in a place to sit down and consider actors. I think it was really just about sharing the depth of my understanding of what I felt she had written and my particular point of view.

One of the biggest things for me was [finding out] who Coralie was considering to play Sue, Elisabeth’s other half, because that was going to inform what kind of film she wanted to make. When she told me she was meeting with Margaret, I immediately had that deep exhale of: Ah, I get it. She really wants somebody who’s an actor first, and the outside will then be created as needed to tell the story. That gave me a lot of confidence.

How did your initial take on the character from the script change once you got on set? 

Because Coralie is such a visual and symbolic storyteller, in casting both myself and Margaret, she left us, to a certain degree, to create the emotional context. Her focus was on making sure we were very, very clear on her shots—the details, positions, and those aspects—so there wasn’t a lot left to have to imagine. The one thing none of us could completely imagine was what Monstro Elisasue was going to look like, reading it on paper. There was no way. But even before we started shooting, we had drawings; we had images; we had things that we were already able to connect with.

The bigger thing for me was finding the [physicality of Elisabeth’s] body as it degrades. There was no prototype for it; the usual rules didn’t apply. The fact that I could haul ass down a hallway but I look like I’m 120 years old—the logical part of my brain was like, “Well, I’d have to be hobbling.” And Coralie’s like, “No, no.” Wrapping your head around a created world with the rules as we were choosing to make them was interesting. 

The centerpiece of the movie is a scene in which Elisabeth falls apart as she gets ready for a date in front of the mirror. It plays out without dialogue; you communicate Elisabeth’s heartbreak entirely through body language and facial expressions. What were your conversations with Coralie like when you were preparing for this scene, in terms of when to give more and when to pull back? 

What’s so unusual in this little sequence, which almost [happens in] three stages, is that it’s an arc that goes from this sliver of hope that Elisabeth will escape from her self-imposed prison to absolute self-loathing and desperation—and almost death. But what’s interesting is that I felt very anchored, emotionally. So then it just became a matter of utilizing the clock as another character to communicate with. Coralie’s focus, in all honesty, was much more on the order of the makeup.

It’s interesting, the things the audience takes away versus what the priorities were on set.

Coralie going, “Use this, use this, use this,” was probably more challenging for me because I was more into the emotion of the scene. I think she may have been more nervous and fearful about that scene than any other in the movie. We did at least 15 takes for each section [of the scene], which was a lot. It was brutal, but each one had a lot of interesting things. For me, I felt like: Gosh, I’ve been here—though not this extreme, obviously. It was about finding a way to create a physicality for it, because I had no words; the physicality became my words.

“The Substance” is a movie about searching for validation and the dangers of chasing it, but it’s also getting a ton of well-deserved awards recognition. How do you find a balance between the two? 

I’ll tell you what my mantra generally is: What other people do or don’t do—the circumstances are irrelevant; how you hold it is everything. That’s what creates your experience. [She picks up a bottle of Evian] Like this bottle. I could say, “Yeah, there’s 10 of them here; they cost, like, $5.” And you could say, “Oh, my God. No, with that particular label, there’s only been 20 of those made.” The water and the bottle stay the same; the only difference is that you now see it as unique and valuable and special, but I don’t. 

The point is remembering not to make it mean too much but also remembering not to make it mean too little, so that I can stay in the joy and the overwhelming gratitude I have for the experience. The greatest gift that this experience has really brought is the opportunity to be with my fellow artists, my peers. It’s the idea of connecting and the riches of other opportunities that come out of shared experiences through our work, as opposed to just the talking about our work.  

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

This story originally appeared in the Feb. 20 issue of Backstage Magazine.. To hear our full conversation with Moore, listen and subscribe to In the Envelope: The Actor's Podcast.