Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore (born December 3, 1960, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, U.S.) is an American actress known for her exacting and sympathetic portrayals of women at odds with their surroundings, often in films that examined social issues. Moore received accolades for her performances in such movies as Boogie Nights (1997), The Hours (2002), and Still Alice (2014), the latter of which earned her an Academy Award.

Early life and career

Smith is the eldest of three children; her American father was a military lawyer and judge, and her Scottish immigrant mother was a homemaker who later in life became a psychiatric social worker. She earned a bachelor’s degree in acting from Boston University in 1983 and moved to New York City soon thereafter. Smith assumed the stage name Julianne Moore, the latter portion of which was her father’s middle name, because all variations of her own name were already registered with the Actors’ Equity Association.

She appeared in several plays and television programs before beginning a three-year arc on the soap opera As the World Turns in 1985. Her portrayals of a psychologist and, eventually, her half sister, earned her a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988. Meanwhile, she had appeared in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater (1987) and trod the boards as Ophelia in a production of Hamlet (1988) staged by the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She returned to the Public Theater in two Churchill one-acts—staged as Ice Cream with Hot Fudge—in 1990.

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Oscar-Worthy Movie Trivia

A supporting role in the domestic thriller film The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) brought Moore to wider attention. Her bold turn as an artist in director Robert Altman’s ensemble drama Short Cuts (1993) was particularly remarked upon. Altman had cast Moore after seeing her in a long-running New York workshop production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which was filmed by Louis Malle as Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Her first starring role was in Todd Haynes’s Safe (1995), in which she played a woman succumbing to an indeterminate malady.

Rise to stardom

Though Moore had bit roles in mainstream fare such as The Fugitive (1993), her first marquee billing came with the Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World (1997), in which she played a paleontologist. She returned to her indie roots with the family drama The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), which was directed by future husband Bart Freundlich (they married in 2003). That performance, however, was eclipsed by her turn as kindly pornographic actress Amber Waves in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997); her complex and sympathetic portrayal earned Moore her first Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actress. She then played a narcissistic artist in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski (1998) and the calculating Mrs. Cheveley in the film adaptation (1999) of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband.

In both Neil Jordan’s adaptation (1999) of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair and Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), Moore’s characters dealt with the ramifications of adultery. The former film earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress. In 2001 she assumed the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling—originated by Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)—in its sequel, Hannibal. Her renderings of women suffocated by the repressive social mores of the 1950s in Haynes’s Far from Heaven (2002) and Stephen Daldry’s The Hours (2002) led to best actress and best supporting actress Oscar nods, respectively.

Movies of the early 21st century

Moore followed several tepidly received relationship comedies with Alfonso Cuarón’s much-lauded futuristic dystopia Children of Men (2006) and later a vampy turn as the unstable Barbara Baekeland (who married the heir to the Bakelite fortune and was murdered by her son) in Savage Grace (2007). She gave more-subdued performances as a woman in love with her gay best friend (played by Colin Firth) in fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man (2009); a woman who cheats on her lesbian partner in The Kids Are All Right (2010); and an unhappy woman married to Steve Carell’s character in Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011).

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In 2012 Moore delivered an Emmy-winning performance as 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in the HBO film Game Change before starring in What Maisie Knew, a modern-day adaptation of the Henry James novel. Her later films included the dramedy The English Teacher (2013); Carrie (2013), a horror film based on Stephen King’s classic novel; Non-Stop (2014), an action thriller set on an airplane; and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015), adaptations of a young-adult novel from the series by Suzanne Collins.

Moore was particularly praised for the subtlety with which she depicted the struggles of a linguistics professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer disease in Still Alice (2014). For her performance, she earned an Oscar for best actress. Moore then gleefully stalked the screen as a vengeful witch in the fantasy adventure Seventh Son (2014) and as an unstable actress in David Cronenberg’s trenchant Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars (2014). She evoked the anguish of a dying woman who must fight to pass her pension benefits on to her domestic partner (played by Ellen Page) in Freeheld (2015), which was based on a true story.

In 2017 Moore reteamed with Todd Haynes for Wonderstruck, portraying a glamorous film actress, and then played a wife and her twin sister in the dark comedy Suburbicon. The following year she starred as a renowned opera singer caught in a hostage situation in the adaptation of Ann Patchett’s novel Bel Canto and as a divorced woman seeking love on her own terms in Gloria Bell. Moore later portrayed a wealthy media mogul who makes a series of startling revelations when she considers donating a large sum to an orphanage in After the Wedding (2019). In the biopic The Glorias (2020), she played feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

In 2021 Moore appeared in the thriller The Woman in the Window and the musical Dear Evan Hansen. That year she also lent her voice to the animated Spirit Untamed and starred as a grieving widow in the miniseries Lisey’s Story, adapted from a Stephen King novel. Moore then reunited with Haynes for May December (2023), a drama in which she played a teacher who had an affair with her student. In 2024 Moore starred with Tilda Swinton in The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodóvar’s adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel about a dying woman who reconnects with an old friend.

Books

Moore wrote the children’s book Freckleface Strawberry (2007), about her experiences with childhood bullying because of her red hair and freckles. She penned several sequels, and in 2010 the first volume was adapted as a stage musical. Her other children’s books included My Mom Is a Foreigner, but Not to Me (2013).