Hollywood actor Demi Moore said the reception to her character’s appearance in the 2003 action movie Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle made her question her place in the industry.
The screenstar, 61, appeared as the main villain Madison Lee – former Angel working for Charles Townsend – opposite Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu.
Then 40, there are multiple scenes where Demi – who rose to fame after starring in hit films such as Indecent Proposal and G.I. Jane – wore a bikini.
The film was released to mixed reception, described by some as the ‘silliest movie ever made’ and by others as an ‘extravaganza of fantastic fun’ and underperformed at the box office compared to the 2000 original.
Amid the discourse, there was intense scrutiny over Demi’s physical looks which left the actor feeling like there ‘wasn’t a place’ for her in the film industry anymore.
‘I felt [criticism] more when I hit my 40s. I had done Charlie’s Angels, and there was a lot of conversation around this scene in a bikini, and it was all very heightened, a lot of talk about how I looked,’ she explained to Michelle Yeoh for Interview magazine.
‘And then I found that there didn’t seem to be a place for me. I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong. It’s more like I felt that feeling of, I’m not 20, I’m not 30, but I wasn’t yet what they perceived as a mother.’
When Oscar-winning Michelle posed that she was questioning where she fits in, the mother-of-three was quick to agree.
‘It was a time that felt, not dead, but flat,’ she added. She had her oldest daughter, Rumer, in 1988, her middle child Scout in 1991, and her youngest Tallulah in 1994.
The Everything Everywhere All At Once star shared that Hollywood is ‘cruel to women of that age’ because of the way women are categorised as either a ‘mother’ or ‘sexy’.
‘It’s like, why can’t a 45-year-old, a 50-year-old, or 60-year-old, be sexy?’ Michelle reflected. ‘But that whole perception is undergoing a lot of change because people like you and me won’t sit back and just take it.’
Demi echoed the sentiment, concluding: ‘No. And I don’t know if I’ve ever done that when I’ve come up against something that I don’t understand exists as a limitation.’
The discussion around her body did mean that Demi took a step back from the limelight at the time, eventually returning to the big screen in 2006 as Rachel Carlson in Half Light.
Now she is starring in body horror movie The Substance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a TV host axed from her job for being ‘too old’, who agrees to take a mysterious drug that promises to turn her into a ‘younger, better version of herself’ – namely played by Margaret Qualley.
It comes from French filmaker Coralie Fargeat.
During the Cannes Film Festival premiere for the movie, she discussed what resonated with her about the plot.
‘What I loved in what Coralie wrote is that this was about the male perspective of the idealised woman that we have bought into.
‘In the film, this newer, younger, better version gets an opportunity and she still repeats the same pattern, she’s still seeking this external validation and in the end comes face to face with just fighting herself.’
And that’s not the only place she is making waves. Demi recently launched a fart positivity campaign on social media, proclaiming ‘farts are nothing to be ashamed of.’
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