Equal pay is still just a fantasy, says Moore
Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore’s latest film explores an older woman’s sexuality. It’s about time, she tells Louis Wise
Julianne Moore has revealed that she still does not get paid as much as male stars, despite being one of Hollywood’s biggest names. In an interview with The Telegraph, she laughed and said ‘Oh no! Definitely not’, when asked if she received equal pay
Julianne Moore is famed for her depravity – on screen, that is. From a pill-popping bitch in Magnolia, to a demented diva in Maps to the Stars and an incestuous mother in Savage Grace, few have plumbed the depths quite as elegantly as the 59-year-old American star.
Even when she plays a buttoned-up housewife, as she did in Far from Heaven and The Hours, or a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, as she did in Still Alice (the 2014 role that finally, after four nominations, bagged her an Academy Award), there’s always a tornado spinning behind her eyes. “She presents as the girl next door,” the screenwriter Bruce Wagner once said. “But she’s the sphinx next door.”
In Moore’s latest film Gloria Bell, however, the star channels a rather different kind of energy; a mumsy one, really, if no less striking for that. The titular Gloria is a divorced, middleaged, bespectacled mother of two with a job in insurance. The film follows her second shot at dating, with good sex, bad sex, a bender in Las Vegas, some laughter therapy and a dose of disco dancing along the way.
“This woman never disengages from her life,” beams Moore, pristine in a voluminous printed dress and her signature red hair done just so in the suite of a London hotel, “and I think that’s pretty inspiring.”
Born Julie Anne Smith on an army base in North Carolina, Moore had an itinerant childhood thanks to her father’s profession – Peter Smith would later end up a colonel. As a child, she moved 20 times and attended nine different schools. Moore, who attended acting classes at school, has said that “it made me attach a very high premium to security”, which might explain why she boasts one of Hollywood’s longest unions – two decades – with film director Bart Freundlich. They have two children, Cal and Liv, now aged 21 and 17. If on-screen, she is all kinds of evil, off-screen
she is remarkably domestic. Or, in her words, “incredibly bourgeois”. Or, “absolutely neurotic about cleaning”.
Gloria Bell is clearly the kind of mess Moore could never be. But she is also a real, complex woman, and the actress relished every minute playing her. The director Sebastián Lelio (A Fantastic Woman, Disobedience) actually made a 2013 version of the film, in his native Chile. It was a critical hit even then. Moore saw the film, loved it, and lunch was arranged between her and Lelio. She had no clue he might want to do a remake, however. “Right at the end he said, ‘Well, I know that you don’t want to remake this’,” she recalls, “and I said, ‘No, well, I would do it if you directed it’, and he said, ‘Well, I would direct it if you were in it!’”
The film is a rare portrayal of a middle-aged woman living her life, which isn’t something Hollywood overindulges in. Does this representation matter?
“Oh, that matters a lot!” Moore exclaims. “Because we are rarely asked in cinema to identify with that person, right? So the fact that she happens to be a woman in her 50s who’s happily divorced, to see someone who’s that vibrant and that alive and engaged with life, and whose story is central, I think that’s great. Because it’s unusual.”
It’s also rare to see an older woman’s sexuality on-screen. Gloria’s relationship with Arnold (John Turturro) is awkward, furious, tender – and I don’t just mean the dancing. “They don’t show older men, either,” rejoins Moore. “I mean usually, when you think of movies, and an exploration of that [sex], it’s usually with young people and it’s a romantic comedy. There’s actually not a whole lot of relationship-driven film right now, when you think that the biggest movies are The Avengers. I don’t think there’s a real exploration of romantic or sexual love in any of those.”
Moore umms and ahhs whether roles like Gloria are becoming more common for her. This is probably partly because she can’t complain – she gets the pick of the crop – but it’s also clear she doesn’t want to wade too deep into the “older women in Hollywood” debate. While she has lent her voice to certain movements – she was a vocal supporter of Time’s Up after accusing director James Toback of harassing her twice on set in the Eighties, and is opposed to her nation’s gun laws – she resists neat labels. Gloria does not spend all day going around bemoaning her fate as a Middle-aged Woman (TM). It’s just “the drama of ordinary life”, says Moore, simply.
“I always feel like there’s more drama in an ordinary day than there is in anything that we manufacture. Gloria’s whole arc in Vegas is completely understandable, but you’re just sort of… gasp!” Gloria’s time in Vegas comes to a head when she wakes up on a sunlounger, with last night’s dress on and one shoe missing. Has
‘Even if pay is hierarchical, actors of equal stature who are playing equal parts should be paid the same’
Moore ever had a Vegas moment? She smiles. “Umm… I don’t think that I would tell a newspaper!”
Moore tends to dodge controversy. There was a kerfuffle recently when she revealed she’d been “fired” from the Oscar-nominated film Can You Ever Forgive Me?, over creative differences – more specifically, because Nicole Holofcener, the screenwriter, wouldn’t let Moore wear a fatsuit to play the frumpy author Lee Israel. It’s the one thing I’m not allowed to ask about.
Her parents, in fact, were dismayed when she settled on acting as a vocation. The reaction of her mother, the Scottish-born Anne, was: “Oh, Julie, why waste your brain?” They insisted she study acting as part of a “proper” degree. “Which is totally fair,” says Moore. “It didn’t even seem early for me to make a decision about being an actor at 17. Now, I’m like, are you out of your mind? I don’t know that I would have been as sanguine as my parents were.”
It doesn’t sound like this will ever be tested. Her daughter Liv recently worked as her PA on forthcoming film After the Wedding, directed by Freundlich, and was less than enamoured by the movie industry.
“Both of my kids are like, ‘Why do people do this?’ ” she says.
She herself takes a realistic view of the industry. When I ask if she gets equal pay, she exclaims, “Oh, no! Definitely not,” laughing at the absurdity of it. She explains that in independent films often she does because actors take a share of the profits rather than upfront pay. “But in terms of other films, obviously it’s hierarchical. So if there are people who have bigger parts and are bigger stars, they’ll be paid more. But I think the question everyone is asking is, well, even if it is hierarchical, and you have actors of equal stature and equal parts, then they should be paid the same. But obviously it’s very challenging.”
Moore knows there is a long way to go, but she is not as cynical about Hollywood as you might expect. I find it a little surprising, for instance, that she cares about winning an Oscar. “By God, it was a moment of sheer happiness for me, and real gratitude,” she says, “because it’s an award given to you by your peers.”
The obvious, trite conclusion to all this is that Moore is that muchdiscussed thing, “a strong woman”. Apparently, every actress in Hollywood these days craves to both be one, and play one. True to form, though, Moore stays politely counter-intuitive; she respects the herd, but doesn’t run with it. That much is clear when I ask if Gloria is a “strong woman” too.
“I don’t think it matters,” she replies. “Sometimes, there are all these adjectives about what you’re supposed to be. I don’t think people have to be strong. I don’t think they have to be anything. I think you just have to be a human being.”
Gloria Bell is released in cinemas
on June 6