The older I get the more I rely on my girl friends
It’s been a gruelling and sometimes perilous journey, full of highs and lows. But as she hits 60, Demi Moore says she’s happier than she’s ever been. Behind her are an incredibly traumatic childhood, a horrific rape ordeal at 15, a wild spell of drink and drugs that almost killed her, not to mention three failed marriages.
Once the word’s highest paid actress – sneeringly dubbed “Gimme Moore” – she has dated some of Hollywood’s most eligible leading men.
But today she relies more on close female friends for support.
The mum-of-three says relationships with pals such as English-born former Big Breakfast star Amanda de Cadenet have become “mini-marriages” as she depends on them so heavily.
She adds: “As I’ve got older I cherish my female friendships. They are essential for my wellbeing.
“Some study showed women couldn’t do without these friendships and I can speak to that.”
Looking back, Demi admits there were times when it was not so easy to have female pals – certainly during her doomed eight-year marriage to Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher.
He was 25 when they met in 2003. She was 40 and soon found herself competing for his attention with much younger women.
When they married in 2005 at their Beverly Hills home, the guests included ex-husband Bruce Willis and their daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, then 17, 14 and 11.
Many said the age gap was too big and they were proved right when the couple split in 2011. This was after Two and a Half Men star Kutcher slept with a 21-year-old he met at a bowling alley with his wife.
Demi claimed later that he cheated twice and also persuaded her to arrange threesomes with other women.
In her 2019 memoir Inside Out she wrote: “I put him first, so when he expressed his fantasy of bringing a third person into our bed I didn’t say no.
“I wanted to show him how great and fun I could be. They were good people but it was still a mistake.
“I was flooded with shame. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this whole thing was somehow my fault.”
At the peak of her career Demi became addicted to cocaine and alcohol.
She relapsed after her split from Kutcher and in 2012 almost died of a seizure after taking nitrous oxide and synthetic cannabis at a party.
However, she bounced back and is now clean, sober, enviably fit and far from single.
One of her most recent dates has been Michelin-starred chef Daniel Humm.
But having survived three failed marriages, she admits she is now relying more on her female friends.
She says: “Occasionally you walk away with one friend – or maybe two – that you’re really close to and they’re like mini-marriages. If I don’t see someone for 20 years and I see them it’s as if no time has gone by.
“You wonder, ‘Why did I let so much time go by when we have such a lovely connection?’” Demi was speaking on fellow actress Jamie Lee Curtis’ Good Friend podcast.
She has always been open about the incredibly hard upbringing. Born in New Mexico to 18-year-old alcoholic mother Virginia Harmon, her airman dad had walked out before she had even arrived.
Demi believed her stepdad was her real father until she turned 13.
Two years later she was raped by a man who claimed to have paid her mother $500.
In her book she wrote: “It was rape. And a devastating betrayal, revealed by the man’s cruel question: How does it feel to be whored by your mother for $500?” When she was 17 her stepfather killed himself. By this point the future star was posing nude for adult magazines despite being under age.
Demi believes her difficult relationship with her mother, who died in 1998, made it harder to bond with girlfriends as an adult. She says: “I made up that I should not lean on women and be totally self-sufficient. My mother was obviously not the safest person and so I didn’t have that sense of a safety net.
“So in true fashion, I cut that off as an option. Just don’t go there.
“But if you do, don’t be needy or a burden and that cuts off the beautiful nature of how we women are with each other.” In 1981, Demi aped her mother by marrying when she was just 18. Her first husband, singer Freddy Moore, was 12 years her senior and recently divorced.
Before their marriage, Demi began using his surname as her stage name The pair divorced in 1984.
I feel in so many ways more alive and more present than ever
T he ink had hardly dried on that first marriage licence when Demi landed her film debut in the teen drama Choices in 1981
But it was supernatural romance Ghost, playing opposite Patrick Swayze, that made her a household name in 1990. More hit films, including GI Jane
DEMI MOORE ON REACHING AGE OF 60
and Indecent Proposal, were to follow and in 1991 Demi shocked some by becoming the first pregnant celebrity to pose nude on the cover of Vanity Fair.
By the mid-1990s she had earned her “Gimme” nickname and was the highestpaid actress in Hollywood. In 1996 she was handed a record-breaking $12.5million to star in Striptease.
But by 2000, when she broke up with Die Hard star Willis, now 67, her career was stuttering and she began to make questionable decisions.
Today she is far more likely to be found on podcasts and TV series than major films. But she insists she is happier than ever, looking forward to her seventh decade and refusing to be “defined by a number”. Instead, she wants “to be defined by my experience”.
Demi recently said: “You hit 59 and you’re already thinking: ‘Well, I’m going to be 60’. It feels very liberating.
“When I think of my grandmother at 60, she in a way seemed to be already resigned to being old.
“But I feel, in so many ways, more alive and present than ever.”