MOORE OR LESS Julianne talks about her favorite and not so favorite movie roles
Always Wanting Moore
Julianne Moore reviews her movie roles. The two-time Oscar nominee remembers her past by Dave Karger
''As the World Turns'' half sisters Frannie and Sabrina may have been the luckiest soap opera characters ever. One was American, the other British. One was charming and victimized, the other cold and selfish. They both, however, had the good fortune of being brought to life in the mid-1980s by future Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore. ''If you're going to do a soap, you always want to play twins,'' says Moore. ''But then you learn that there's nothing more boring than acting with yourself, because you know what's going to happen.''
Since then, Moore's career has hardly been predictable. She's shuttled between the ghastliest of schlockers, the edgiest of indies, and the priciest of blockbusters. And this season, with two highly touted performances -- as a 1950s house-wife in November's ''Far From Heaven'' and a suicidal mom in December's ''The Hours'' -- Moore delivers a one-two punch that could make her the first performer nominated for dual acting Oscars since Emma Thompson and Holly Hunter were in 1994.
Here Moore, 41, reminisces about the unforgettable women she's embodied on screen.
Julianne Moore's filmography
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) In her first American feature, Moore gets killed by a mummy, a plot point that came as a surprise. ''I have a tendency not to read long passages of action in scripts. I like to read dialogue. So I missed the part where the mummy comes in and I'm dead. The director said to me, 'You didn't read the end, did you?''
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) Director Curtis Hanson (''8 Mile'') gave Moore her first juicy role, as the sassy friend who uncovers demented nanny Rebecca De Mornay's jealous scheme. ''Curtis and I both won [1997] L.A. critics' awards, he for 'L.A. Confidential' and I for 'Boogie Nights.' People kept getting up to talk about him and they would slam 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle': 'Can you believe this is the same man who made that movie?' Curtis finally stood up and said, 'I was able to make 'L.A. Confidential' because I made 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.' I like that movie! And Julianne was in it too!' I was like, 'Good for you!'''
Body of Evidence (1993) Moore played Willem Dafoe's jilted wife in the much-maligned Madonna thriller. ''It's horrible! I mean, it's even worse than you could imagine. What a stinker, that's all I can say. I've seen [Madonna] a few times since then. We've never spoken about it. I can't imagine she had a good time either. That movie was not a good time.''
The Fugitive (1993) Moore's doctor character was originally supposed to romance Harrison Ford; instead, the actress ended up in a bit part. Still, the performance caught the eye of Steven Spielberg, who later cast her in ''The Lost World.'' ''I tested and got this [big] part. Right before I showed up, they called and told me they'd cut it. [Director] Andy Davis decided that they shouldn't have this love interest so soon after his wife died, blah blah. I was devastated. Harrison was so sweet about it. He was the only person who was like, 'Well, do you still want to do it?' I'm like, 'I have to! I need the money!'''
Short Cuts (1993) Robert Altman's ensemble drama includes the now-infamous scene in which Moore, nude from the waist down, argues with her husband (Matthew Modine). ''The movie that got me most excited about filmmaking was [Altman's] 'Three Women.' Bob saw me on stage in 'Uncle Vanya.' I can remember where I was when I picked up the phone and he said, 'This is Bob Altman. Do you know who I am?' I thought it was a friend playing a trick. It literally was one of the happiest moments of my life.... There was a very prurient interest [in the nude scene] from the press that I didn't expect. Because it was completely nonsexual.''
Assassins (1995) It may be a forgettable Sylvester Stallone action vehicle, but it provided Moore, who played cat-loving target Electra, with her first $1 million payday. ''I was very happy about that. Sly was wonderful to me. I don't know that I'm so successful in the film. It's not one of my favorite performances, let's put it that way.''
Safe (1995) Moore lost 10 pounds to play a housewife suffering from ''environmental illness.'' ''I'll never do that again. I made myself so sick. But I wanted her to look like you could barely see her -- like she was dying, which she is. I get more response to that movie. People come up and say, 'That was me.' And they start to cry. 'Safe,' 'Vanya on 42nd Street,' and 'Short Cuts' were my serious introduction to film. I went from being a soap opera actress to a serious actress.''
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) At 5 foot 5, Moore, who played Jeff Goldblum's scientist girlfriend, was dwarfed by her costars, 6-foot-5 Goldblum and 6-foot-4 Vince Vaughn. ''Steven [Spielberg] would say, 'Run! Run faster!' So Vince and Jeff would be running, and I'd be hopping along like a jackrabbit, trying to keep up. And looking ridiculous.''
The Myth of Fingerprints (1997) The New England family drama may have had a tiny theatrical release, but it's where Moore met writer-director Bart Freundlich, with whom she now has two children, Cal, 4, and 7-month-old Liv. ''We started to see each other about two weeks into it. It was casual. I don't think either of us was thinking that we were going to have two children!''
Boogie Nights (1997) Moore earned her first Oscar nomination as a drug-addicted porn star in Paul Thomas Anderson's drama. ''I met Paul at a party. A friend said, 'I want you to meet this guy -- he's written this movie, and he wrote a part for you.' So I meet Paul and he's like, 'You're going to be in my movie, man!' And I said, 'Well, I'll read it.' It's interesting to explore characters who've been the cause of their own tragedies. I love the disparity between her intention and her reality. She's this maternal figure, but she can't be a mother.''
Cookie's Fortune (1999) After taking a rare comedic role in the Coen brothers' 1998 film ''The Big Lebowski,'' Moore reteamed with Altman, appearing as Glenn Close's dim sister Cora. ''I modeled her on my son. He was 6 months old. So all the faces that she makes are the ones that he was making, because I wanted to make her childlike and frustrating and kind of opaque.''
An Ideal Husband (1999) Moore earned a Golden Globe nod for the star-studded Oscar Wilde adaptation. ''The language was fun, the character was fun, but that wig! There are times when I look so dreadful. I usually see my films twice. I saw 'Ideal Husband,' like, 17 times -- it was driving me crazy. It kept showing in places where I couldn't walk out of the screening. I was like, 'If I have to see this f---ing movie one more time I'm going to blow my brains out.'''
The End of the Affair (1999) Moore's second Oscar nod came for her portrayal of a married woman having an affair with a writer (Ralph Fiennes) in war-torn Britain. She wrote to director Neil Jordan, begging to read for the part, but when the audition required her to cry on cue, she froze. ''I couldn't get it up at all. Not a tear. And I knew that the girl who had auditioned before me had sobbed. So I was convinced that I'd blown it.... [Filming] was probably one of the best experiences I've ever had, if not the best. We laughed a lot, which is kind of incredible when you think about it.''
Hannibal (2001) In a widely reported casting contest, Ridley Scott hired Moore over Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie, among others, to play Jodie Foster's ''Silence of the Lambs'' character opposite her ''Surviving Picasso'' costar Anthony Hopkins. ''I was in London doing 'End of the Affair,' and I got this call saying 'Ridley wants to meet you.' I flew back to New York, drove straight to the hotel, Ridley came over, we had a cup of coffee. The next day I got the offer. It was great to be with Tony again. We had such a fantastic time.''
Far From Heaven (2002) Moore won the best-actress award at the Venice film festival for her performance in the Douglas Sirk homage, which reunited her with her ''Safe'' director, Todd Haynes. ''We don't need to speak to one another when we're working. We have an innate understanding of what the other one wants. The thing about 'Far From Heaven' is that it's not about the '50s. We were making a movie in the style of movies that were made in the '50s. This is not 1950s behavior; it's movie behavior. When Todd and I saw [the film] in Venice, I was very tense. I hadn't seen it with an audience before. No one laughed. They didn't make a peep. I was like, 'Boy, did I blow in that!'''
The Hours (2002) Playing the Mrs. Dalloway-reading Laura Brown in an adaptation of Michael Cunningham's novel meant that many of Moore's scenes were with 4-year-old Jack Rovello. ''It was an interesting way to work, because I realized I barely spoke. Nicole [Kidman] and Meryl [Streep] have all these speeches. They talk about this happening and that happening. 'Leonard! Get me out of Richmond!' and 'I feel like my life is crumbling!' And I'm like, 'We're gonna make a cake.'''
Degrees of Seperation
