At the age of 62, Demi Moore is the hot favorite to win her very first Oscar Sunday night.
Despite working in Hollywood for more than 40 years and headlining a number of beloved films, “The Substance” star’s path to the little gold man has been blighted by “bigoted” and “anti-Demi” power players, according to one of her former directors.
Roland Joffe, who directed Moore in 1995’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’, revealed that an arts editor at an East Coast publication told him industry insiders were unhappy he had picked the “Ghost” actress to play the “scandalous” Puritan Hester Prynne.
The editor insisted that “people felt that Demi had not earned the right to such a plum classic American role and suggested some other expected names” and that he would “regret” casting her, Joffe told Page Six exclusively.
Moore famously posed naked while seven-months pregnant with her second daughter Scout for the August 1991 cover of “Vanity Fair”, in shocking photos — for their time — taken by Annie Leibovitz. It was an iconic moment, but the editor wasn’t a fan.
“She suggested that Demi’s appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair, nude and pregnant, and the sensuality of her performances somehow disqualified her as a serious actress,” Joffe, who also directed the award-winning classic, “The Killing Fields,” said.
Moore followed up “The Scarlet Letter” with 1996’s “Striptease.”
She was paid $12.5 million to play a former FBI secretary who takes up stripping to make enough cash to win back custody of her young daughter.
The payday made Moore the world’s highest paid actress at the time and a target for backlash.
“The anti-Demi feeling at the time was a sour mixture of jealousy at her physical freedom … and jealousy that she had become the highest paid female star,” Joffe said.
Moore spoke about being pigeonholed as an actress who could open big blockbusters — but didn’t get critical or awards season acclaim —when she accepted her Golden Globe in January.
“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress … and I believed that.” she told the starry crowd as she clutched her gong for Best Actress in a Motion Picture (musical or comedy).
“That corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it,” she continued. “Maybe I was complete, maybe I’d done what I was supposed to do.”
But then, the script for Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” was brought to Moore’s attention by her manager, Scott Metzger.
The body horror film portrays an aging Hollywood star who takes a drug that creates a younger version of herself.
“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,’” Moore said of the project she ended up starring in opposite 30-year-old Margaret Qualley. “And the universe told me, ‘You’re not done’.”
In September, Moore revealed to Variety that it was a producer on “The Scarlet Letter” who told her she was “popcorn” … which she took to mean “I’m not a critically acclaimed kind of actress.”
There were seven producers on the movie, including the ex-Harrods mogul Mohamed Al-Fayed who was accused of raping and attacking over 20 female employees following his death in August 2023.
His son, Dodi Fayed, who died alongside his lover Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris, France, in August 1997, was also a producer on the project.
However, it’s strongly rumored in Hollywood circles that Andy Vajna, the Hungarian producer behind the “Rocky” movies, made the comments. Vajna died in 2019.
Joffe insisted he had never heard anything about the “popcorn” slight, and doubted it was Vajna, while a source close to Moore would not speak further.
Moore remains close to her ex-husband, Bruce Willis, with whom she shares daughters Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 31.
The “Die Hard” actor is battling frontotemporal dementia, and last month Moore said she visits him weekly, telling Variety, “For me, there was never a question. I show up because that’s what you do for the people you love.”
Despite all her success, Moore has long said that being known for her looks and sexuality came at a price.
She revealed she was pulled aside and told multiple times to lose weight by a Hollywood producer when she was starting out.
“It was very embarrassing and humiliating,” she told “Elle” magazine in November, “There is a lot of torment I put myself through when I was younger.”
In her 2019 memoir, “Inside Out”, Moore, who made her name in the ’80s classic, “St Elmo’s Fire”, admitted that her exercise “obsession” became a serious problem while she prepared to play a naval lawyer in 1992’s “A Few Good Men.” The film was shot just a few months after she gave birth to Scout.
“I didn’t feel like I could stop exercising,” Moore wrote, “It was my job to fit into that unforgiving military uniform.”
“Getting in shape for that movie launched the obsession with working out that would consume me over the next five years,” she added. “I never dared let up.”
As she aged, friends say she struggled to get cast.
“Demi didn’t get offered roles for many years — you just have to look at her IMDB page to see that,” one pal told Page Six.
It’s an all too common issue for actresses of a certain age, Dr. Dendy Engelman, a board-certified dermatologist who works with a number of high profile patients in the entertainment industry, told Page Six.
“Hollywood allows men to age in the proper way, look at Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford,” said Engelman. Meanwhile, she said, women start worrying about “aging out” as soon as they hit 35.
“The pressure for female actors in particular is to not only be good at your trade, but to look great doing it,” she said.
Moore has certainly appeared fab on the awards season red carpets, thanks to the help of her trusted stylist Brad Goreski and facialist-to-the-stars, Keren Bartov.
“Whatever she’s doing it looks incredible and I think she should be celebrated not only for her craft, but for her aesthetic,” Engelman said.
But Joffe and other Hollywood insiders have their fingers crossed that Moore will finally get her due.
Moore’s biggest competition for the Best Actress Oscar is 25-year-old Mikey Madison, who plays a feisty sex worker in Best Picture favorite, “Anora”.
“I will defend Demi to the death, and I have been very upset that she doesn’t get the reputation she deserves, she’s an Academy standard actress…she has the ability to connect with the audience in an earthy way,”Joffe said. “I’ve always said that working with her was an absolute joy.”
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