A battle for love and rights
Julianne Moore, who plays a closeted lesbian in Freeheld, says time is right for film’s release
Julianne Moore credits Canadian actress Ellen Page’s openness about her own coming out with helping her get to the heart of portraying terminally ill New Jersey police detective Laurel Hester in love-and-rights drama Freeheld, having its world premiere at TIFF Sept. 13.
It’s based on a true story about a lesbian couple’s battle “to be treated like everybody else,” said Moore.
It’s set in the early 2000s and Page, who is also a producer on Freeheld, plays Hester’s partner, Stacie Andree.
Hester’s request to make Andree her police pension beneficiary upon her death was denied. Their ensuing battle, reluctantly taken on by the very private couple, makes Hester’s sexuality — long kept private for fear of repercussions on the job — dramatically public.
“I really didn’t understand the pain that a person feels when they’re closeted,” said Moore from Los Angeles, ahead of arriving in Toronto for the premiere.
“She (Page) was very frank about absolutely everything and I would ask her tons of questions,” said Moore, an Oscar winner for her portrayal of a woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s in Still Alice. “I am lucky I got to know Ellen the way that I have. “Here is this young woman closeted for such a long time in a professional environment who was not able to describe her difficulty and her pain, and it was so generous of her to explain it all to me and to share it, and she was so incredibly vulnerable in her explanation of it,” Moore said of Page, who came out in February 2014.
“I love her to bits and we were instantly friends and partners, and it was just great to go to work everyday and have her there,” continued Moore, affection and admiration evident in her voice. “She really did a beautiful job portraying that quality of Stacie’s, that gentleness and reticence and the fierceness of her love for (Laurel) as well.”
It’s not the first time Moore has played a lesbian onscreen or filmed an intimate scene with another woman, including The Kids Are All Right and Atom Egoyan’s thriller Chloe. Andree also provided her with insight into playing Hester, said Moore.
The 2007 Oscar-winning short documentary, also titled Freeheld, provided a visual record of part of Hester’s life, but only her final months.
Oscar winner Julianne Moore has played a wide range of characters in her career. Think you know them all?
Madame president
She’ll reprise her role of President Alma Coin in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2, due out on Nov. 20.
Madame who would be vice-president Moore played Sarah Palin alongside Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt in HBO’s TV movie Game Change in 2012.
Porn star
Moore was nominated for an Oscar for playing tragic, coke-sniffing adult film star Amber Waves in Boogie Nights (1997).
She also abides
Moore was in the 1998 cult classic
The Big Lebowski, playing artist Maude Lebowski, who has a very special relationship with Jeff Bridges’ Jeffrey (The Dude) Lebowski.
Heavenly role
In Far From Heaven (2002), Moore was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of a 1957 housewife whose discovery of her husband’s secret life leads to a new friendship with farreaching consequences.