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Previous pages, Demi Moore on the set of her latest movie,
The Substance, 2024 ©I Wonder Pictures Today, at the age of 61, Demi
is a winner again. Showcasing

rare intelligence and lucidity,

she agreed to star in the

sci-fi horror The Substance.
The film, with some quite

frightening horror scenes,

is a provocation. It wants

to induce us to reflect on

the significance of women’s

bodies in a society based
on image.

About 15 years ago in Los Angeles, I was on my way to 12 million dollars, becoming the highest paid actress in
interview Demi Moore when someone told me: “Take a good Hollywood, but the film is massacred, and everything is
look at her knees. They’re saying she’s had work done on blurry ever since. In 1997, G.I. Jane (where, again, her trained
those too”. marine-like body is at the center of the story) is a box-of-
At our meeting she was sitting on a sofa and wearing fice flop and crushed by critics. In 2003, Demi reappears
a short skirt. So, I couldn’t help but look at her knees. She (in a swimming costume and skimpy overalls) in Charlie’s
noticed. She knew there was gossip about her knees going Angels. She is now in her 40s and Hollywood no longer
around in those days. She lifted her head, our eyes met, and knows what to do with her.
we burst out laughing, no need to add more. Despite this, she never really falls off the news and pop
This is testament to how Demi Moore’s body has always culture radar. Because, in those golden years, Demi was
been a topic of conversation and how aware she has always more than a sexy icon, she was the aesthetic canon of that
been of it. period, of that cinema. And if the films no longer worked,
It was already like this in the 1990s, the years of splen- the plot of her personal life did: wife of Bruce Willis, another
dor and success of films like Ghost, A Few Good Men, In- superstar of the time, mother to their three daughters, then
decent Proposal and Striptease. Films, especially the latter the divorce and her second marriage to Ashton Kutcher, fif-
two, built around the irresistibility of Demi’s body. In Inde- teen years her junior.
cent Proposal, Robert Redford offers a million dollars for a In 2020, increasingly distant from the stage, she pub-
night with her, in Striptease she is a former FBI employee. lished an autobiography (Inside Out, published in Italy by
When fired, she loses custody of her daughter. For money Fabbri) in which she reveals a childhood and adolescence
and out of desperation, she goes to work in a sleazy strip filled with trauma: a bipolar mother and alcoholic adoptive
club where a politician loses his head over her. father and sexual assault. The book is a journey through
Striptease is the zenith but also the (negative) turn- pain but also the testimony of a process of reconstruction
ing point of her career: Demi receives a cachet of over and healing.

Protagonist Cinema 51