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No Apologies No Regrets
From the Roles She Plays to the Cigars She Smokes,
Actress Demi Moore Makes Her Own Choices
by Mervyn Rothstein
It's raining--a Florida rain, warm and
steady. Moisture fills every pore. The clouds are dark and somber, the
palms more gray than green. A mass of army barracks, low, black, ugly;
a platoon of trailers, a stolid pack of long grim trucks. A sprinkling
of bright blue tents, like pushpins on a corkboard chart. Men and
women, in shorts and jeans, shelter under a canopy, gather around a
food cart, load equipment on a truck.
Near the barracks, a congregation of movie lights, shining bright
yellow through opaque windows. In front, a small group, clustered in
blue director's chairs under a protective canvas, talking, glancing
now and then at two Sony monitors, black and white images from inside
the barracks: a cameraman lights a set, a stand-in stands in for the
star.
In a chair, a figure in combat fatigues, standard khaki issue, the
name "O'NEIL" in black stenciled over the left pocket. A soldier, lean
and powerful, black hair mowed to a standard military crewcut, and
then some, a dark stubble outlining a head distinctly ovoid. A left
cheek painted with dirt and blood--more than smudged, a victim of
training more than basic. Behind the chair, a woman; her hands, in
firm round strokes, massage the soldier's neck and back. The soldier
holds a cigar.
"It's a Cuban Montecristo Joyita," the soldier says, taking a long,
pleasurable puff. The voice is assertively strong--and distinctly
feminine. "I prefer the panatelas, though I've tried the Montecristo
No. 2, the torpedo. It's a little big for me but I like it." The name
on the back of the chair: DEMI MOORE.
Demi Moore? The sexy, glamorous, provocative, cigar smoking film star,
the highest-paid actress in movie history, dressed in combat gear, her
alluring jet-black tresses shorn practically to their roots, her face
and figure similarly bereft of the glamour that has adorned movie
screens and magazine covers, gossip columns and celebrity TV shows,
for more than a decade?
Yes, Demi Moore.
The time is mid-June, the scene Camp Blanding, a National Guard base
in the Florida countryside an hour or so south of Jacksonville. It's
the location du jour for Moore's next movie, titled G.I. Jane, in
which she plays a Navy lieutenant, Jordan O'Neil, who opts for
training as the first female Navy SEAL--or Special Forces
frogperson--and undergoes an ordeal at the hands of those in the
military who feel that combat training is not woman's work. Moore is a
co-producer of the film; her director is Ridley Scott, whose credits
include Thelma and Louise, Alien and Blade Runner.
The hair--or lack of it--doesn't faze Moore one bit. It simply "goes
with the territory," she says, "of doing whatever's necessary to make
the role realistic," to make an audience believe she is the character
up there on the big screen. The cigars are also part of the
territory. Moore has been smoking them for seven years, and, she says,
"this has become a big cigar smoking set. There's always a Cuban cigar
in some crew member's mouth, and Ridley always has a Montecristo No. 2
in his hand."
But for Demi Moore, there's much, much more that "goes with the
territory" of being a highly publicized, highly visible and highly
paid celebrity in the world of American cinema.
The films in which she has starred--they include Ghost, St. Elmo's
Fire, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, The Scarlet
Letter, Striptease (for which she was paid $12.5 million, a record
for an actress) and Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in which
she is the voice of Esmeralda)--have grossed more than a billion
dollars. That's right, billion with a "b." She has earned more than
$21 million in the last two years, making her the only film actress on
the Forbes magazine compendium of the highest-paid performers.
Moore has been sometimes lauded and more often vilified by the
celebrity-hungry mass media, praised for the highly popular movie
Ghost, roundly criticized for baring her breasts in Striptease. She
has been condemned for posing nude and pregnant on the cover of Vanity
Fair and for daring to call President Bill Clinton to try to get
Pentagon support for the Navy SEAL movie. (She managed only to speak
to a presidential aide, and the Pentagon turned her and her producers
down because there are no women SEALs, so the movie is being made
without official assistance.) Her almost nine-year marriage to Bruce
Willis, and the birth of their three daughters, have been frequent if
not constant subjects of speculation and fabrication in the headlines
of perhaps every tabloid on the face of the earth.
And yet, to Moore, it is all part of that "territory." She is, for a
movie star, refreshingly direct: her magnetic green eyes immediately
engage rather than avoid. Later, in her trailer, she will talk of her
career, the press, the publicity--good and bad--her technique as an
actress, her marriage, her children, her own troubled childhood, her
hopes for the future--and her love of cigars. She will unhesitatingly
speak her mind.
Criticism of nudity? "You wouldn't limit a man that way." The
controversy over Striptease? "They're already making a big stink over
the poster, which is nothing more than a pantyhose ad. Yet because
it's me it seems to be a big deal."
Evasion is a word Moore seems never to have learned--usually to her
benefit, but sometimes to her detriment. Her attitude toward life is
to march right ahead, do the best she can and let the chips fall. What
others may think is not her concern. Is she the stereotypical,
traditional girl next door? Of course not. But is she a highly
successful, highly competent, driven and ambitious but ultimately
decent and caring professional woman? Yes.
The renowned British actress Joan Plowright, Moore's co-star in The
Scarlet Letter, once put it this way: "Demi uses what she's got and
puts it in the marketplace. She has an honesty, truthfulness and
straightforwardness that is very, very attractive." With Moore, what
you see--and sometimes you see a great deal--is what you get.
Much of what you get consists of dedication, determination and
devotion. She is into building and maintaining her body beautiful, and
she works out frequently with her personal trainer, himself a
state-of-the-art specimen of what years of weightlifting and
cardiovascular exercise can accomplish. After arriving on the set at
7:45 a.m. and working on the movie constantly until 1, she will use
her lunchtime not to rest in her trailer but to go for a 40-minute
run--in the 90-degree Florida sun--her trainer at her side.
But while she certainly places great value in her trim, well-toned
physique, she seems to have the proper perspective. Talking to a crew
member between takes, she will glance down at her abdomen and
laughingly point to the "loose skin." "Loose skin," she says. "It's
from the baby. But it was worth it."
She also, from most accounts, does not behave on set like a spoiled
diva, a grown-up member of the brat pack. The massager, for instance,
who was busy kneading her shoulders outside the barracks is not for
Moore alone. Moore makes a point, on all her films, of providing free
massages for all crew members. "They work so hard and don't get paid a
lot," she says. "It's a little fringe benefit that means something."
Then there is this unsolicited comment from a female crew member upon
finding out that a visitor was on the base to write a profile of the
star: "She is generous and gracious of spirit. She is never rude, and
she is a pleasure to work for. I've worked with many actresses, and
she is the best. She's special."
Moore is relaxing in her trailer after a long day. She is showered,
fresh; the blood-and-grime makeup has been removed, her glamorous
cheekbones and prominent chin are sparkling clean. She has changed to
jeans and a tight white T-shirt. Bright silver earrings dangle from
her fully exposed, somewhat pointy ears, and the five-o'clock shadow
that is her temporary coiffure seems somewhat neater, more in
place. With or without hair, she exudes unalloyed eroticism--the
healthy kind, natural, totally unforced.
"So," she says, taking a seat and facing her visitor directly, "what
would you like to talk about?"
The current movie seems a natural starting point--and in talking about
Lieut. Jordan O'Neil, Moore will seem more often than not to be
talking about herself.
"This story addresses the issue of whether women should be in combat,"
she says. "We try to see if a woman can meet the standards that a man
would have to measure up to. What attracted me is that the character
is a woman challenging herself beyond what her normal expectations of
herself would be. And because the arena she is challenging herself in
is one of physical strength, I found it was interesting to put myself
in a position where it's inevitable that she will be weaker, and to
see how she can face that fact and overcome that obstacle to
succeed. Stepping into a masculine world but maintaining everything
about the character that's a woman is fascinating. And besides, the
tomboy side of me really needed a place to go."
After all, Moore says, "on the set it's me and a lot of men. So it's
addressing my masculine side, the part of me that has always been able
to be one of the boys. It's the part that's aggressive in the sense of
being assertive. And it's embraced, because I'm with a bunch of men,
and as opposed to being looked on as too domineering, or too pushy,
being called macho or butch, I find they're happy to let me be what I
am. We're all out there acting rough and talking rough and smoking
cigars and cussing up a storm, and there's great joy in the
camaraderie. As a woman, you don't often get a chance to step into a
situation like that. Women have that camaraderie among themselves now
more than they ever have, but men inherently have it. It's socially
ingrained."
The movie and the preparation for it have at times been grueling, she
says, but she loves it. "I'm just having a blast," she says. "On many
days it doesn't feel like work. I did pre-training for the movie where
we went through a modified SEAL training. I showed up at 6 a.m., me
and 40 guys, some extras, some actors, we were all thrown into it, and
they kicked my ass until 4 p.m. and I didn't say boo. I loved it."
The role, she says, is completely different from the stripper she
portrays in Striptease, "who is so inherently feminine."
"I try to find roles that are completely different from what I've done
before," she says. "I'm just trying to keep it interesting, to
challenge myself, and the only way to do that is to stretch. If I
stayed in the same mode it might be safer, but it just wouldn't be as
challenging."
Moore acknowledges that the subject matter of Striptease is more than
slightly controversial. "Yes, I know that some people feel that
stripping is exploitive, that some women's groups have certain
attitudes toward women who choose to do it," she says. "But what I
discovered when I got on the inside of it was an interesting aspect of
strength: not the down sides, which are fairly obvious, but the plus
sides, which are not. Many of the women feel very empowered, not by
taking their clothes off but by the fact that they have the ability to
affect someone's emotions, to change a mood, to alter someone's
experience, just like an actor does, male or female. The women also
have a very good sense of themselves and their sensuality, a comfort
with their bodies. And I also found that some of them feel quite
empowered by the fact that they are doing a little dance and walking
away with between $800 and $3,000 a night."
She also acknowledges that her most recent movies--The Juror, Now and
Then, The Scarlet Letter--have not been as commercially or critically
successful as she and her producers might have hoped, and that this
fact is a potential cause for concern in terms of both the money she
might make on films to come and the opportunities she might be
offered. The Scarlet Letter, in which she starred as Hester Prynne,
was blasted for making Nathaniel Hawthorne's sad ending a happy
Hollywood one, and critics questioned whether a twentieth century
sexpot was the right choice to portray a seventeenth century
adulteress. But Moore is both philosophical and optimistic.
"In the balance of my track record of pluses and minuses, I'm far
into the pluses," Moore says. "No career is 100 percent. In truth, I
have been fairly fortunate. But it's a crapshoot every time you go
out. Sometimes you have a story you think has everything and it just
doesn't work. Sometimes you do something that you think has nothing
particularly commercial going for it and it turns out to be a big
hit. Sometimes a film, like The Juror, actually gets decent reviews
but doesn't do that well, and you can't explain it. You just never
know. But I seem to just keep chugging along and keep moving through
it.
"I don't get too concerned because the variables are so great. And
the effort I put into making a movie is never different. What I am
putting into this is no different from what I put into The Scarlet
Letter. I put every ounce of my heart and soul into it. The best thing
I can get from a movie is the experience of making it. And the rest is
whatever it's going to be. You can't get caught up in the end
result. If I do, then I will stop living in the here and now. So for
me, even though I've got a very big movie, Striptease, coming out in
two weeks, and it's a movie that's had a lot of ink, a lot of focus,
and I know already that it's going to have a lot of controversy, I
also know that it's already far behind me. Because I'm here making
this movie now. It's the process that counts, and I've moved on, and
I'm in the process of doing something else. Striptease seems so long
ago."
The bad press Moore has often received does not bother her, she
says. "I don't give it much power," she says. "I don't allow myself to
say or feel that they're not being fair to me. I feel that the press
is a big machine that runs of its own will, and to fight against it
would take too much of my focus and my energy. All I can really do is
try to find the safest way I can to use the press for positive
things--promoting what I love, the movies I make. The rest of it, even
though sometimes it hurts, sometimes it's disappointing, sometimes
it's unjust, I just don't want to get caught up in it. I've seen what
the press does to other stars, and I know I'm no exception. Everybody
has their day. Sometimes it's a good time for you in the press,
sometimes it's just your turn to get hit. There seems to be no rhyme
or reason, no matter what you're doing or how hard you're
working. Except you do see that sometimes it comes like the tide--if
it's been a really good time for you, the press starts looking for
reasons to bring you down, and if you're really down it seems as if
they start to jump on a bandwagon so they can be the creators and
bring you back. So I just try to ride the wave."
Being a celebrity can be difficult, she says--when she remembers that
she is one. "When I'm not working, I'm a pretty easygoing, simple kind
of person," she says. "I'll be out at a restaurant on the weekend, a
low-key kind of place, and we'll be in the middle of a discussion, and
it's only when somebody comes up and asks me for my autograph that I'm
reminded that that other person, the celebrity, is me, too. And
sometimes I watch that other me while it's happening, and it's
interesting, because I usually don't see myself that way. It's only
when somebody else reflects it that I see it."
She tries, she says, to see "the part of celebrity that's the
sweetness and not the part that's a pain in the ass--where you're in
the middle of a conversation and you're trying to share an evening
with friends, and people are interrupting. They don't mean to. They're
excited. They're wanting to come close to something that they only see
at a great distance. So I try to have compassion for the part that can
be irritating. After all, they're the audience, and without them...."
The only time it's really unpleasant, she says, "is when it invades my
family's private time, the time I spend with Bruce and the children,
and I get taken away from them. If, for instance, we're at Disney
World and people are coming up all the time and making it
uncomfortable."
Moore and Willis have been married almost nine years, since Nov. 21,
1987--"Knock wood," she says with a smile, and then knocks wood. She
met Willis not long after ending a difficult three-year relationship
with actor Emilio Estevez. The couple have houses in Idaho and Malibu,
California, and an apartment in Manhattan. They are also among the
celebrity partners in Planet Hollywood (others include Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone).
In these days of swiftly vanishing celebrity marriages, the
Willis-Moore partnership is, if not a record, at least an
accomplishment. Are there any secrets to their relative longevity?
"I have no idea," Moore says. "Marriage for anyone takes a lot of
commitment, compromise and just plain old desire to want to be
together and walk through the good and bad times equally. I don't
think we have any secret. I think we are pretty much just like
everybody else trying to go through it. We certainly have extra
pressures because we are both in the limelight, and sometimes it feels
as if the public doesn't want to allow any normal mistake or struggle
you may have without amplifying it and making it into the worst thing
possible.
"But I think other than that we're pretty normal. And I think it helps
that we stay focused on our life together and not on our work, which
we keep very separate. That has so far worked for us. My work is my
work and his work is his. We share it as we choose to, but I don't
need him to read every script I'm interested in, and vice versa. I
think that makes being together much more our priority--the joy of the
things we get to do as a couple and the things we do with our
children, keeping our interest on each other as individuals. And I
think the fact that we live in Idaho, that we don't live in the town
where our industry is based, also makes a huge difference."
There are times, of course, when their film careers don't allow them
to see each other as much as they would like. But there are also
advantages to a film life. "Obviously, our work takes us apart, takes
us on location," Moore says. "Sometimes we work in different places at
the same time, which means we have no choice but to be apart. But we
have very fortunately in almost nine years made a conscious choice not
to be apart for more than two weeks. We always get together, even if
it's just for a day or a weekend. And the thing most people don't
realize is that while our work does take us apart more than those who
can be together year-round, we have something that people without our
lifestyle don't--we have the opportunity to take two or three months
off together. That kind of quality certainly makes up for the times we
are apart. We just look on it as an alternative lifestyle--if we
worked a 9 to 5 job and saw each other every day, and had only two
weeks off a year, we might get sick of each other."
The children--Rumer Glenn, 8, Scout Larue, 5, and Tallulah Belle,
2--are "always with us," she says. "They have a wonderful home base,
with the same school and the same friends, and yet they get to see
amazing parts of the world that they would never experience if they
were only in one place." Two of the children have already begun their
own film careers. Tallulah had a brief role in The Scarlet Letter as
Hester Prynne's child, and Rumer had a much bigger part in Striptease.
Moore says that the earliest memories of her own childhood include the
recurring desire to be a movie star. "I can't remember not wanting to
be one," she says. Her childhood, however, was not the happiest--and
it is a subject on which she prefers not to dwell: "It's just that
it's been done."
Demi Guynes was born on Nov. 11, 1962, in Roswell, New Mexico, to
Danny and Virginia Guynes. Her parents were both teenagers. Her father
sold newspaper advertising--when he could find work--and by the time
Demi was 13 the family had lived in almost 30 towns. She was 15 when
her parents divorced. Demi was, she once told McCall's, "lost"; she
felt as if she "was nothing." Her father committed suicide when she
was 18, and she is estranged from her mother.
She left high school at 16 and began pursuing a career as a model and
actress. When Demi was 18, she met and briefly married a 30-year-old
rock performer named Freddy Moore. She was now living in Los Angeles,
and she tried a few acting classes, practicing with a young neighbor
who was also trying to start a film career: Nastassja Kinski. She got
her first big break at age 19, landing a role on the TV soap opera
"General Hospital." Two years later, in 1984, she was cast as Michael
Caine's sexually precocious daughter in Blame It on Rio. Next came her
breakthrough role, as the wild, drug-addicted Jules in St. Elmo's
Fire, a character who Hollywood insiders said bore more than a passing
resemblance to the actress who portrayed her. But when the director
threatened to throw her off the set, Moore entered a rehabilitation
center--and put that unhappy part of her life behind her.
Moore has said that in those years she used alcohol and drugs "to hide
my feelings." These days, looking back, she says that she has "no
regrets."
"I think that everything that happens to us in our lives makes us who
we are right now," she says. "So I wouldn't change one thing. Not one
thing. It's not through ease that the things that are good come to
you, that you learn how to excel. It's through the adversity. It's
through overcoming obstacles that we grow, that we have perspective
and appreciation. How do you understand gain if you don't understand
loss?
"My parents gave me the best they could. They gave me a lot. And the
things they didn't have spurred me to reach for what I didn't get. So
I have no regrets in my life, and I don't blame anyone for anything,
because I still have an opportunity to strive for the things that
weren't."
The next morning. Sick bay. A long, narrow stucco building, pale
yellow, a mile or so from the barracks. It's the real sick bay; the
producers have persuaded the camp officials to move the ill soldiers
to a tent set up nearby. The movie lights are shining through the
windows, but this day the sun is shining, too.
Inside, on a white-sheeted bed, Demi Moore is seated, in white bra and
dark pants. Another actress, in a dark blue uniform, a Navy nurse,
examines Moore's blood-stained back--for the eighth time. The camera
is rolling. The nurse touches a bruise. Moore winces. The nurse
pauses, looks at Moore. "Why are you doing this?" she asks.
Moore hesitates. "Do you ask the men the same question?"
"As a matter of fact, yes, I do."
"What do they say?"
The nurse pauses again. " 'Because I get to blow shit up.' "
They look at each other. Slowly, hesitatingly, they laugh.
"There you go," Moore says.
From a corner of the room comes the voice of director Scott: "Cut."
After eight takes, he is happy; Moore isn't.
"Let's do two more takes," she says. She wants to get that laugh
just right, lighten it up. Scott says he thinks it's right the way it
is, a little subdued. She says she thinks it will work better if she
and the nurse share the laugh "just a little more." He thinks a
moment, and agrees. They do it two more times. And then a third. And
then a fourth. They speed it up, try to make it even more natural.
The nurse and Moore laugh, one more time.
"Cut," the director says. Moore nods. She thinks they've got it.
Back in the trailer, midafternoon, rested after her 40-minute run,
Moore explains.
"The dynamic of the scene was that I have been under constant pressure
because I'm a woman," she says. "I've been the outcast. So Jordan at
that moment is a little hypersensitive to anybody's comments. And it
turns into a moment of comfort for me; she is communicating to me,
'Don't lose your sense of humor, don't lose sight of the big picture.'
She's communicating that she's my friend. It's what's underneath the
lines, the subtext, that matters. Because the scene is ultimately
about finding support in a world where I'm really standing on my
own. And there were subtle differences in the takes, and the moment
when we finally hit it, it just fell into place. It evolved as we were
doing it. The joy for me is in the collaboration.
I have to be there to see where the other actor is going, what she is
thinking about, what she wants to do. It's my favorite way to work. I
rely on my intuition."
Her work as an actress, she says, is "100 percent instinct. I haven't
had years of learning in acting class. It just didn't go that way for
me. Not because I ever felt I was so wonderful I didn't need it. I'm
sure I could use plenty of guidance. Actually, I was too insecure to
want to take that path. I always just felt that if I got in a class
and somebody said, 'Boy, you're really not good, and maybe you should
consider something else,' I would have had to, and I thought that if I
could fake it (continued on page
171)(continued from page 166)long enough maybe I could figure it
out. There's that old saying, 'Fake it until you make it,' and I think
I might have been skating on that thin ice for a while in the hope
nobody would find me out. I never even really had the ability to put
myself in that kind of learning situation until right before I did
Ghost, when I worked in New York with a teacher named Harold Guskin. I
enjoyed it, but being in a class would probably still be intimidating
for me."
One thing Moore does not find in the least intimidating is a good
cigar. "I've been smoking them on and off for seven years," she
says. "I started just really for the fun of it. I saw people smoking,
usually just men because back then you didn't see very many women
smoking cigars. And of course my husband smokes them. And I wanted to
find out what it was about it that they found so appealing."
Her first serious cigar, she says, was "a large, strong Montecristo,
and I thought it was way too much for me. But then I discovered the
smaller cigars, and I began to have my romance with them."
She knew her relationship with cigars had reached a new level when her
friends "Tom and Nicole"--as in Cruise and Kidman--gave her a
traveling humidor. "It's my work humidor. I keep it in my trailer. I
keep it stocked with a variety of cigars, ones I like and ones I have
available for other people."
These days, she says, "I switch between the small Cohiba Panatela and
the little Montecristo Joyitas. But now I've graduated to where I
sometimes have a Cohiba No. 2 or a Montecristo No. 2. I like a mild
cigar. And I like it not to be too large. I have small hands and a
small head, and I don't want a cigar that's bigger than both of those
parts of my body. I like the flavor. I like the taste. I enjoy the
smell of a good cigar. It relaxes me. It's a great social activity,
because there's something about smoking a cigar that feels like a
celebration. It's like a fine wine. There's a quality, a workmanship,
a passion that goes into the making of a fine cigar."
In an interview five years ago in The New York Times, Moore said that
one goal in her life was seeking "inner peace." These days, she says,
she feels she is on her way. "It's a never-ending journey," she says,
"but I feel that my understanding, my comfort level and my overall
serenity has grown tenfold. It's a matter of time, age, experience and
acceptance. We spend a lot of the early part of our lives viewing only
what we don't like about ourselves. And then slowly we start, little
by little, to gain perspective about the things that aren't so bad
about who we are. Thegeneral feeling that we're never enough is more
common than people like to admit, and just that recognition brings
about inner peace."
She does not like to think far ahead, so she doesn't really know what
her goals are for five or 10 years from now. There's the hope that
perhaps she'll be able to make movies that "are maybe a little bit
smaller, a little bit more intimate, a little bit more about character
and not about how many people they'll reach."
"But I don't really know what I'll be looking for then," she says. "I
may decide that I don't want to work, that I want to just stay at home
for two years. Or maybe I'll want to travel with my children for a
year, take them someplace else to live. I just know I want to try to
be in the moment as much as possible. Because it's fleeting. And
nothing reminds me more of that than my children."
Speaking of children, there is one thing she is sure she would like to
do, and in much sooner than five or 10 years: have another child.
"A boy," she says. "A boy would be lovely to balance the energy in the
house, and so Bruce isn't so outnumbered. We would very much like
another child, and if I ended up with another girl that would be
wonderful, too. Daughters are lovely. But selfishly, I think I'd like
to have a boy who adores me in the way my daughters adore their
father."
She stops and smiles. "That would be nice," she says. "Maybe that will
be my next goal."
Mervyn Rothstein is an editor at The New York Times and a
frequent contributor to Cigar Aficionado and Wine
Spectator.
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