Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman and Pamela Anderson are changing the narrative for women over 50
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“I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it,” said Demi Moore in her acceptance speech at this year’s Golden Globes. “Maybe I was complete. Maybe I’d done what I was supposed to do. As I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out of the box absolutely bonkers script come across my desk, and the universe told me that ‘you’re not done’”.
Moore was picking up the Best Actress award for her role in The Substance. “I’ve been doing this a long time, like over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” she said, fighting back tears. In The Substance, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading Hollywood star turned TV fitness instructor who is fired from her aerobics show on her 50th birthday.
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The subject matter may be apt, but in reality Moore is one of the women over 50 in Hollywood who has had a big comeback this year. In the film, her character grapples with unrealistic standards around beauty and ageing. “There was an incredibly liberating aspect to stepping into this really vulnerable, exposed place emotionally and physically,” she said in an interview with Elle magazine.
Moore’s physical appearance has been scrutinised for decades. In 1991 she posed naked on the cover of Vanity Fair while seven months pregnant. The cover was described as pornographic and some newsstands refused to stock the magazine. She became a so-called sex symbol in the nineties through her femme fatale roles in films like Indecent Proposal and Disclosure, but struggled with body image.
