“The Substance” addresses the obsession with beauty and age discrimination. Moore could be in line for an Oscar nomination.17.09.2024 | 2:57 minShe had long since turned her back on the dream factory of Hollywood. But now US actress Demi Moore is returning to the big screen in a film about regaining lost youth.
She plays Elizabeth Sparkle, a lonely, washed-up celebrity who is now only allowed to be an aerobics queen on TV. On her 50th birthday, she is fired by TV manager Harvey. A feeling that Demi Moore knows well, as she admits in an interview with ZDF.
There is a certain vulnerability (…). This is also what gave rise to the fascination with this topic. Because we all associate something with it, because we know the feeling of not being good enough.
Demi Moore, actress
Demi Moore never allowed her body to age
Who doesn’t want to be young at any price? Elizabeth gets involved with a mysterious substance – once injected, her body creates a younger version of herself. Elizabeth becomes Sue. She alternates weekly between young (Sue) and old (Elizabeth). However, this only works if both stick to certain rules.
An ageing actress (Demi Moore) injects herself with a dubious substance and creates a young, sexy version of herself.18.09.2024 | 5:40 min
Demi Moore actually plays herself in “The Substance”. She has never allowed her body to age. She has had countless Botox treatments and cosmetic surgeries over the years. Now, she says in an interview with ZDF, she has had enough.
Moore: Swimming free from men’s expectations
Women are chasing a perspective of the idealized woman, “which we as women have unfortunately adopted and which we chase after,” says Moore.
This should again be about how we see and perceive ourselves as women, and not about how others see or reflect us.
Demi Moore, actress
The film reflects the advertising and film industry’s crude view of the female body. Demi Moore knows this view; she was the most sought-after woman in the dream factory and a sex symbol in the 1990s.
Demi Moore set standards for pay
She was the first woman in Hollywood to negotiate a double-digit million dollar fee for the lead role in the movie “Striptease” (1996) – an incredible amount for a woman at the time. Her then husband Bruce Willis received three times more at the time.
When Demi Moore declared her pregnancy to be a symbol of erotic femininity on the cover of a US magazine, Hollywood accused her of pornography. From then on, her career went downhill.
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Cosmetic surgery for “Charlie’s Angels – Full Throttle”
For the film “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” (2003) she had her body completely revamped. From then on, entire articles were devoted to the question of how many operations she had undergone.
Today, at 61, she feels liberated, she says. Also because of the role that the French director gave her in the film, which, by the way, is a European production and not made in Hollywood.
Self-judgment, striving for perfection, trying to free yourself from mistakes – none of these things are exclusive to women. But we women are subject to some of them. But at the end of the day, it’s always the choices my character makes, the choices I make. I have a choice.
Demi Moore, actress
“The Substance” ist Moores Comeback in Hollywood
In “The Substance,” the main character Sue stops showing up on time for the body swap – that’s actually one of the rules. The consequences are monstrous; you suspect that Elisabeth and Sue will have a gruesome ending.
With this role, Demi Moore has once again become a talking point in Hollywood. She is once again using her body – only this time as a gruesomely beautiful revenge campaign against the entertainment industry’s obsession with youth.
Nicolette Feiler-Thull is an editor at “Kulturzeit”.
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Source: ZDF
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