For decades, Demi Moore has been one of the biggest names in Hollywood – and for her return to leading lady status, she isn’t holding back. She’s the central star of much-anticipated festival hit The Substance, a goopy and gruesome outing from French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, and one that’s difficult to pin down. In its tale of an ageing fitness instructor who takes drastic action after being told she’s “too old”, The Substance is part gruelling body-horror, part sly satire, all no-holds-barred thrill-ride.
For Moore, donning spandex in the central role of Elisabeth Sparkle, it reminded her of another wild swing in her career. “Reading Ghost, I thought, ‘Wow, we’ve got a love story, a thriller and a comedy,’” she tells Empire. “‘This could either be a disaster, or come together and somehow work.’ [The Substance] fits into that category.” The script alone had her hooked though – an early sign that it wouldn’t be a disaster. “My team sent it with a caveat of, ‘[We] don’t want to say anything about it, just read it,’” Moore says. “Because even on paper, it takes you on such a wild ride. Yet it had real depth, and the subject is so important.”
That subject is both body image, and societal expectations around how bodies should look and behave, all woven into the film’s oozing genre elements. “It’s such a unique way to explore the issue of ageing, and the male perspective of the idealised woman that we’ve bought into,” says Moore. “Not what’s been done to us, but the part we’ve played in doing it to ourselves.” It’s something that the star identified with, having written about the effects of Hollywood stardom in her autobiography, Inside Out. “I share quite a bit about my experience in relation to my body,” Moore says. “What I went through, the levels of humiliation, being told to lose weight. Whilst that was a circumstance I experienced, it was equally the process of what I put myself through, by placing too much of my overall value on my body. But within that has been my opportunity to overcome and actually find value in myself from who I am on the inside.” Prepare for a film that gets under the skin of the issue, and pulls all the innards out.
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Read Empire’s full Demi Moore interview about The Substance in the Joker: Folie À Deux issue – on sale Thursday 1 August. Order a copy online here. The Substance comes to UK cinemas on 20 September.