EVER MOORE THAN ENOUGH

Red talks to the Oscar-winning actor Julianne Moore about movies and motherhood

THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF LIFE IS A CORE THEME FOR JULIANNE MOORE – BOTH IN HER WORK PROJECTS AND HER PERSONAL WORLD. HERE, SHE TALKS TO ELLIE AUSTIN ABOUT WHY SHE AVOIDS CAREER EXPECTATIONS, HOW SHE’S NAVIGATING PARENTING HER TEENAGE KIDS AND WHETHER WE SHOULD EVEN TRY TO IMPOSE ORDER ON THE CHAOS

There certain are subjects that Julianne Moore is fed up WITH discussing. The first is women and ageing.

Ever since she started to make a name for herself as a film actress in the 1990s, Moore has fielded questions about how it feels to get older in youth-obsessed Hollywood. Does she worry about becoming ‘invisible’? No. Did she feel more confident in her ability to land big, exciting roles when she was in her 20s and 30s? Absolutely not. ‘I don’t think many 21-year-olds have any confidence at all,’ she says, matter-of-factly. ‘The thing that makes people feel confident is generally accomplishment and that can take time.’

She’s similarly frustrated by conversations about plans for the future. ‘I was talking to my husband in the car today about how people are always asking, “What’s next?”’ she says. ‘“Are you moving in together? Getting married? Are you going to have a baby?” When that baby grows up it’s, “What will you do when your kid goes to college?” It’s an effort for us to accept there are things we can’t control, so we try to put this narrative on things; we attempt to impose order on chaos.’

Life’s unpredictability, and how we respond to it, is a central theme in Moore’s latest film, After The Wedding.

It’s directed by none other than her husband, Bart Freundlich, and is a remake of the acclaimed 2006 Danish film of the same name but with one significant difference: whereas the original centres on male protagonists, Freundlich gender-flips the script to build his story around two women whose lives irrevocably collide.

‘I was watching the original film and was really struck by the actor Rolf Lassgård, who played one of the lead roles,’ says Moore, squeezing segments of lemon into her sparkling water. ‘Not thinking anything of it, I said to my husband, “That’s something I’d like to do.” Then the idea came up of switching the genders.’

Moore plays Theresa, a highly successful media executive and mother-of-three who is considering a multimillion-dollar donation to an Indian orphanage. On the eve of her daughter’s wedding, Theresa summons Isabel, the American manager of the orphanage (played by Michelle Williams), to New York. Isabel thinks she’s in the city for a quick business meeting but Theresa has other ideas, insisting that she attend the lavish nuptials before flying home. Isabel reluctantly agrees, only to discover that she recognises Theresa’s husband. Cue various shattering revelations and the realisation that, although Theresa and Isabel don’t get on, they both desperately need help that only the other can provide. It’s a musing on class, privilege, motherhood and the way in which individual decisions echo through the generations.

‘It was an opportunity to talk about these two women who are so self-realised,’ explains Moore, brimming with enthusiasm. ‘You have these characters who have built great big lives. So often with someone like Theresa, she’s the boss lady and she doesn’t have time for a life outside work, she’s not fleshed out. But I know a lot of women who have really big careers and big families and care passionately about both. For me, this was a chance to see that on screen.’

It’s a Saturday afternoon in late summer and we’re sat in one of Moore’s favourite Manhattan bistros, a stone’s throw from the West Village house that she shares with Freundlich and their two children, Caleb, 21, and Liv, 17. Our table is right at the back of the restaurant, shielded by a pillar that Moore tucks herself behind with the careful poise of someone who knows a thing or two about keeping a low profile. She’s understated but flawlessly elegant in a black chiffon dress and Birkenstocks, her hair lightly curled, her fingers stacked with chunky rings.

‘I wouldn’t say I can be anonymous in New York,’ she says, quietly. ‘But people leave you alone. I love

LA but, traditionally, it was a showbiz town. It’s nice to be in a city where there’s more diversity in terms of what people are doing.’

A waiter comes to the table and announces that they’ll make Moore some courgette chips, even though they’re not on the menu. ‘Really?’ she exclaims with wide-eyed excitement. ‘That’s awesome! They usually only serve them at lunch. Do you want some? They’re so good.’

For an Academy Award winner who has appeared in more than 70 films and is often described as one of the most accomplished actresses of her generation, Moore’s tastes are refreshingly simple. You sense that if she could strip away all the things that come with a Hollywood career (the red carpets, the press interviews, the attention) and just focus on the acting, she would do so in a heartbeat. It’s this unshowiness that has made her such a compelling presence on screen over the past three decades. From Boogie Nights to Magnolia to Still Alice (the film that finally won her an Oscar in 2015 for her portrayal of a linguistics professor suffering from Alzheimer’s), Moore is known for playing complex, unravelling women with an emotional rawness few can muster.

She attributes her fascination with these characters to childhood dinner-table conversations. Her father was a paratrooper-turned-military judge, her Scottish-born mother a psychiatric nurse, which meant family discussions often revolved around how people behave and why. Born Julie Anne Smith on the Fort Bragg army base in North Carolina, she and her two younger siblings spent their early years criss-crossing America due to their father’s job. She attended nine schools, making it tricky to forge both a sense of identity and a stable group of friends. Despite this, she was a brilliant student who relied on books as a rare constant in her life. ‘My parents always saw the three of us as individuals and made it clear there was no limit on what we wanted to achieve,’ she says, showering her chips in salt. ‘My veering into the arts was a surprise because they thought I’d do something academic: maybe law or medical school.’

She studied theatre at Boston University, then moved to New York, landing her first role in a soap opera called As The World Turns before taking to the stage and then film. In 1986, aged 26, she married the actor and director John Gould Rubin. By 1995, the marriage had fallen apart. It was a gloomy, rudderless time when she worried that her personal life would never measure up to her professional one. ‘I did think, “There’s a certain point past which, if I don’t have a partner, I will have a child on my own,”’ she says. ‘I felt pretty determined that I was going to have a child, whether it was biologically or I adopted one.’

In 1996, she was sent a script by Freundlich for a film called The Myth Of Fingerprints. The pair didn’t know each other, but agreed to meet to discuss the project. Moore doesn’t remember much about their first meeting other than the fact she was brusque, telling Freundlich, who is 10 years her junior, that the script was too long. She eventually agreed to be involved and, within a few weeks of filming, they were a couple. Did they try to hide their budding relationship from the rest of the cast and crew? ‘Absolutely. When you start to see someone, you don’t know if it’s going to last. We were as quiet about it as we could be and we stayed together,’ she says with a grin that shows she’s still besotted. ‘It’s been 23 years.’

In After The Wedding, there’s a scene where Moore and her on-screen husband (played by Billy Crudup) passionately embrace in the bath. I wonder how Freundlich felt about directing this particular interaction. ‘Bart and Billy are very close friends, so I’m the one who ends up feeling most uncomfortable,’ she laughs, burying her head in her hands. ‘I’m like, “Let’s get this over with! I hate it!”’

The film became a true family affair when Moore’s daughter, Liv, joined the crew as a production assistant. Does she hope to follow in her parents’ footsteps? ‘No,’ says Moore firmly. ‘She was 16 and looking for a summer job. Our son worked on my husband’s last film and then decided he didn’t want anything to do with being on set and I think that was the case for her, too. She said, “Why do people want to do this?” I said, “It’s a really

‘I was pretty determined I was going to have a child, whether it was biologically or i adopted one’

hard job. You’re standing in the heat all day and the hours are long.”’

Moore is a beguiling mix of steeliness and down-to-earth warmth (Freundlich has said that what first drew him to her as an actor was her duality). On the one hand, she has no truck with questions she considers too probing (when I ask whether her parents had a happy marriage, she replies that they married ‘very young’ and then goes silent). On the other, she is deeply empathetic and interested, asking why I chose to move to New York from London and then dispensing detailed advice about the best neighbourhoods for different life stages. Speaking of which, I wonder how she feels watching her children step out into the world. Caleb will graduate from college next summer, while Liv will leave home to start life as a first-year student. ‘It’s complicated. It’s exciting but also sad,’ she says. ‘It’s a big transition when your lives have revolved around the school year for so long.’

We discuss the differences between raising daughters and sons before she concludes that she will always worry about both of her offspring equally. There was a particularly sleepless night recently when Liv came back from a party with a group of friends. ‘They were all going to spend the night,’ explains Moore, a slight tension in her voice. ‘There were boys who were going to sleep in another section of the house. Once everybody finally went to bed, I was a wreck. I kept listening for everybody and checking.’ She experienced the world of millennial relationships in a little more detail than she might have liked this summer when Liv became obsessed with Love Island. ‘I watched bits of it and it’s shocking,’ Moore says with thinly veiled horror. ‘I was like, “This is too much!” I hate it when they say…’ (she adopts a Cockney accent), ‘“I really like a guy who looks like this, a tall guy.” What do you mean he has to look like this? Of course you have be attracted to someone, but that’s only the first step. To be honest, Liv could barely understand them [the Islanders] because some of their accents were so thick.’

When her mother died in 2009, Moore applied for a British passport as a way of honouring her Scottish heritage. Culturally, she feels a pull to the British Isles and has recently devoured Fleabag and read Sally Rooney’s Normal People: ‘I thought it was beautiful. All the misunderstandings between the characters…’ Although she values her downtime, Moore is acutely aware of the privilege that comes with her platform. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, she has been a vocal advocate of changing the laws around gun ownership in America and is the founding chair of Everytown Creative Council, a community of high-profile entertainment-industry names who have resolved to use their combined voices to amplify the gun-safety movement. ‘I think we’re in crisis,’ she says, soberly. ‘The whole world is. It’s a time of real unrest, unhappiness and brutality. I always cared [about gun prevention] but the more information you have, the more you’re able to actively participate. It’s a subject I talk about a lot and that isn’t going to stop.’ Since January, her activism has seeped into her domestic life. ‘I’m on a thing where I’m not buying anything. I read an article about someone who gave up shopping for a year for environmental reasons. I did it for a month and have carried it on. I can buy books, but I can’t buy clothes, shoes or jewellery unless I have run out of everything I have. If I have used every piece of soap in the house, then I can buy new soap.’

We circle back to 20-something Moore and the life she thought she might have ahead of her when she arrived in New York, hoping to somehow make a living from acting. ‘I didn’t expect anything,’ she says. ‘With a career in the arts, you have no expectations. People say, “Did you think it might all go away at some point?” I say, “Yes,” because that isn’t unprecedented.’

Her phone flashes with a message from Freundlich saying he’s outside to collect her. ‘In life, we make a series of choices,’ she says, scooping up her bag as she stands to leave. ‘The next choice could always be the one that influences us in a way we never imagined.’

After The Wedding is released in cinemas on 1st November