On the screen, she leaves the family, loses a child, rules over men. But he considers his real role to be the best — wife and mother. Meeting with Julianne Moore, who is looking for harmony in a world where even simple balance is rare.
«Hello. I’m Julie,” says Moore, entering the “executive” suite of the Cannes Hilton hotel. And he holds out his hand — small, dry, ugly, with short-cut nails, freckled, with a soft squeeze. The hand of a caring mother. «Why is she introducing herself? — flashes at me. “She doesn’t suspect that I don’t know her name …” But with the abbreviated form of the name, she makes something clear. Oh yeah: her acting name Julianne is a combination of her own first name, Julie, and her mother’s middle name, Ann. Julianne she is on the screen, but in reality … Even here, in Cannes, at the world’s main film festival, among the glamor and sky-high number of stars on the facade and stars in the rooms … even here she is Julie, a real person and does not hide behind a stage name. “I may be a good actress, but a bad celebrity,” she says of herself. And indeed: there are no rumors about her “with pepper and mustard” … And there is no star charisma in her, just as there are no cosmetics, manicures and well-thought-out toilets: a simple gray-green suit made of crinkled silk, not a single bright designer detail, a straight skirt closes knees. An elderly woman, thin, fragile. Porcelain smooth skin with freckles, red hair — Scottish blood is showing. Moore speaks of this fact with irony: “My mother emigrated to the United States as a child from Scotland. So I am sewn on a tartan lining. But in elegant porcelain and fragility there is something disturbing, some kind of brittleness. And her calmness is rather a consequence of fatigue. He speaks measuredly, sometimes he sighs with concern. Often uses the terms «strange», «amazing», «unstable», «fickle». It seems that her vocabulary is derived from a sense of the fragility of the world she has built. A world in which Julianne Moore is the mother of two beautiful children, a happy wife and a screen star.
As if wanting to prioritize, she initiates the conversation herself.
Julianne Moore: Now it’s so difficult for me to talk about cinema, even in Cannes … Probably because I consider the main thing of all that has been done is that by some miracle I managed to create a family, give birth to children, be with them, live the life of a normal person. Based on this, I choose both roles and a place to live …
Psychologies: And what are the criteria?
D. M .: For example, I chose New York to avoid this creepy Hollywood star existence. And an apartment… Here Bart and I lived in a beautiful apartment. And then a room was vacated upstairs, in the attic, a loft. We bought, made a grandiose repair (husband’s brother is an architect). It turned out amazing: two levels, the whole of Manhattan is visible. But I just didn’t know where to put myself in this huge space — so much space, so much a person doesn’t need … unless, of course, he is the hero of a science fiction film! And I always wanted to live in a townhouse: in the same place, with New York crampedness, all the rooms are one above the other and the rooms are on average 25 meters, no more. That’s for a man! In general, at some point the realtor called, I looked and realized: this is mine, like normal people, the bedroom is 15 meters, the living room is 30 … The building is old, 1839, but the main thing is New York. It’s a big small town — it consists of several towns-villages. I know everyone in my West Village: chefs in restaurants, an uncle from a newsstand. In our unpredictable life, this is a special bonus — to know the neighbors. I even begin to truly understand political events when someone I know participates in them. My hairdresser’s boyfriend is a UN translator. When the war broke out on the Lebanese border, the hairdresser said: «My Alberto has no time to breathe now.» And I, under CNN news from Lebanon, say to Bart: can you imagine, this Alberto has no time to breathe! Bart laughs at me … And with the roles I have the same. After all, we don’t fly into space so often, and everyone has everyday troubles: sudden love, divorce, and a child, alas, everyone can get lost … And everyone can get tired of their life, feel superfluous in it. Here are my heroines — people who have never been guaranteed happiness and security …
Is this how you feel about life? No guarantees?
D. M .: Probably… You know, for many years when I work from home in New York, I maintain a certain daily ritual. I drink two cups of coffee at breakfast, I leave the house at the same time, I walk wherever I need to go … And it turns out that I intuitively calculate the time in such a way that I always go to the traffic lights at the very moment when the green light for pedestrians turns on , I never linger on the sidewalk … As if I have a feeling: if I make the wrong move, turn the wrong way, linger at some shop window, and the world of my well-being, which was hardly arranged with difficulty — and my inner one too — will collapse in one moment!
Unmotivated anxiety, as psychotherapists would say …
D. M .: Yes, all the signs are there: for example, I love horror films, and this, they say, is a way to channel anxiety … But I feel incredibly lucky: I have children, really healthy, and a family, and relationships, and a career. This is the rarest luck — when one person has it all! That’s why I’m worried. Worried, worried … Bart says: «If there is nothing to worry about, you will find something.» He’s right. But really, anything can happen at any moment!
Have you always had this anxiety?
D. M .: Probably always. As a child, I was such an excellent student. One of those kids who always plays by the rules, who hates being squashed. And then, you know, in any class there are such children — one is unsportsmanlike, the other is too short, the third is wearing glasses … I was «three in one.» Glasses are a completely separate issue. When I moved to study in Germany, where my father was transferred, I cut off my hair and changed my glasses to contact lenses. And this was an emotional shock for me: people began to treat me completely differently, from now on they found me a cutie! Even my parents have changed towards me. Dad still remembers how mom saw me in the school production of Sleeping Beauty and whispered to him (deafeningly, to the whole audience!), “God, Peter, she’s pretty!”
As a child, you and your parents traveled a lot. What did these journeys leave in your mind?
D. M .: I think it made me more flexible. My dad is in the military, and by the time I was in high school, I had seen the world: we lived in Panama, we moved all over the US, from Texas to Alaska, in Germany, we moved more than 20 times. It was amazing to understand that in fact people everywhere live the same way — the same feelings, experiences, fears. From the moment you begin to realize this, you no longer feel alone … and exceptional … Dad was a helicopter pilot, a paratrooper. Fought in Vietnam. Then he graduated from law school and returned to the army — first as a lawyer, then as a judge. He is a soldier and has always personified for me the army itself, the primacy of order, the inability to step over subordination — maybe my “excellence” is from here …
Do you remember how you felt when your father was in Vietnam?
D. M .: I was five years old and my brother was only two weeks old when my father went to Vietnam. It was difficult for my mother — almost a girl with two children in her arms. She didn’t think of life without her father at all — after all, they met when they were 12, in church. And since then they have not parted. When my father left for Vietnam, my mother was, as I now understand, completely depressed and worried all the time — for my father, for us. Strangely, she only spoke to me about this when I had children of my own. She’s probably right — I wouldn’t have understood her before.
Your decision to become an actress did not seem too exotic to your parents?
D. M .: This happened to me at the same time. Of course, I participated in school plays, but until the age of 17 I was going to become a doctor. The only magazine we subscribed to all the time was Time. And then one day Meryl Streep, my favorite actress (both then and now) appeared on the cover there. I read her interview. Dad and I talked about her, about her films. And suddenly I said: “You know, dad, I want to be an actress. It’s the only thing I would like to do.» Papa was silent. She and her mother were just upset. They always thought that I should become someone, a professional. Finish school, university, then find a job and live. And so I thought. But at some point, this ideal model broke down, and it became somehow obvious that life is more complicated than a chain of sequences … In general, the parents were upset. But when I graduated from high school, my mother took the Frankfurt-New York tickets for both of us. The deal was this: I try to get into several acting schools, and if they don’t get me, I go to a “normal” college. But for some reason I was in great demand. And she herself chose the acting department at the Boston School of the Arts. Oddly enough, my parents, as a result, gave me incredible support, and not only, by the way, moral: they paid for my education at school. Amazing, right?
Do you even need an outside opinion? In councils?
D. M .: Yes, I asked for advice, maybe once in my life … To Helen (Barkin, actress, friend of Moore. — Approx. ed.). When I met Bart. I had a difficult period in my life. I really wanted to divorce my husband, but the process was dragging on. And then someone called Bart Freundlich, a director who offers me a role in his debut film «Shadows of the Past.» I demand in a rather annoyed tone to formulate why he wants me to play. And he answers me so seriously, calmly, convincingly … And I somehow calm down internally. And then … Already on the set, I realized that I was completely in love with him. He was 26. I’m 35. That’s when I asked Helen for advice. And her advice was, “Leave him alone. You are a famous actress, he is a debutant. You will knock him out. Don’t bother him.» Asked for advice and didn’t listen. Anyway, Bart and I have been together for 10 years.
What made you act differently, against the advice of a friend?
D. M .: Do you know our American word — chemistry? This is a special relationship, some kind of chemical reaction between a man and a woman, from the outside the mind cannot understand it at all. I think all true feelings are like that.
Everything important in your life did not happen immediately: you became a star after 30, at 35 you met your husband, your first child was born when you were 37, the second — after 40 …
It’s never too late to meet a miracle. And children … This experience makes everything deeper, absolutely everything — all your feelings, fears, tenderness … With my such a fickle, changeable profession, in which a career is a relative concept, fame is an unstable thing … no, for me it is an invaluable gift — to be a mother .
Do your children somehow realize that you are a movie star?
D. M .: Cal — yes. One day he came home and said: “Mom, you are on the covers because you are a celebrity.” I said, «No, I’m on the covers because I’m an actress.» I try to explain what my job is and what its purpose is. And a celebrity is a product of marketing, not a personal effort of a person. Unfortunately, people have firmly learned that the only form of success is success in the media: whoever is on the covers, on the screen, is successful. And how you look is much more important than who you are. Look at Hollywood, at the covers: everything is the same and unreal — lips, hips, hair. This is violence, the dictatorship of the standard.
How would you feel if you were turned down for a role because of your looks?
D. M .: Nothing special. I’m 47 years old. What do I care that someone thinks about my appearance … One thing surprises me: my husband still thinks that I look great.
Moore smiles at this phrase. For the first time in our conversation.
Private bussiness
- 1960: December 3 was born in the family of military personnel Peter Moore Smith and psychiatrist Ann Smith. The eldest of three children.
- 1979: Enters the College of Fine Arts, Boston University.
- 1983: Moves to New York, plays in the theater; marries a casual acquaintance — an Indian Sundar Chakravarti.
- 1985: Separates from her husband.
- 1986: Marries actor/director John Gould Rubin.
- 1988: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by a TV Series for How the World Turns.
- 1989: Film debut in Michael Welton’s horror film Carnage 2.
- 1993: «Runaway» by Andrew Davies.
- 1996: Meets her future husband, Bart Freundlich.
- 1997: The Lost World: Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg; the birth of a son Caleb.
- 1998: «The Big Lebowski» by the Coen brothers; Oscar nomination for her performance in Boogie Nights.
- 2002: Birth of daughter Liv; Prize at the Venice Film Festival for his role in Far From Heaven.
- 2003: Double Oscar nomination for The Hours and Far From Heaven establishes the Julianne Moore Foundation for Research and Treatment of Lumpy Sclerosis, a disease that affects children.
- 2007: Next by Lee Tamahori, «Wild Grace» by Tom Kalin, «I’m Not There» by Todd Haynes; filming Blindness by Fernando Meirelles and the western Boones Lick by Barry Levinson.