As we enter a new year of upcoming horror movies, it’s going to be real hard for other releases to measure up to the violent images we’re still replaying in our heads from The Substance. Along with the movie earning praise from critics and being among the 2025 Golden Globe nominations, the movie’s lead, Demi Moore, recently shared how the role changed her perspective on her own career as an actor.
If it feels like it’s been a long time since you’ve seen Demi Moore lead a movie prior to The Substance, you’re on to something, because it has. The actress has never gone cold turkey on the acting front since she rose to fame in the ‘80s, but the last time she was the lead of a movie was in the early 2000s. With that in mind, here’s what the actress had to say about how she was feeling about her career before making the 2024 favorite:
I went through a period where I didn’t quite find where I belonged. The material I was seeing, it was like nothing was bad, but nothing was great. My question became, is this part of my life complete? Have I done what I was supposed to do here? And then I realized that if I didn’t have the answer to that question, I have to then inject the focus and energy to answer that question…
Demi Moore opened up about how her life as an actor was going while taking part in Los Angeles Times’ Actress Roundtable with Danielle Deadwyler, Cynthia Erivo, Saorise Ronan, Zoe Saldaña and Kate Winslet. Moore said the period before The Substance was a “low point” for her to a certain degree because she was grieving a part of her life that she thought she would have to say goodbye to.
While Moore was in this period of her life, she shared that she decided to make a mental shift to hold herself in “a state of belonging” and value towards herself. And once she did, as she continued:
And what’s interesting is, as soon as I made that shift, The Substance two weeks later arrived across my desk. And it was the first piece of material in a very long time that I felt moved by.
Incredible, right? The Substance feels like a film made exactly for Demi Moore, due to her incredible performance and the material about aging in the industry associated with it. Of course, where she was in life allowed her to really resonate with the film’s visceral self love message in between all the jaw-dropping body horror that has been talked about ever since its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Following the success and praise of The Substance, we have a feeling Demi Moore’s career is going to see a sudden boom, and we cannot wait to see this era for the actress. This weekend, the actress is up for Best Performance By A Female Actor In A Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes, along with the movie itself being in contention for Best Picture and Best Director, and her co-star Margaret Qualley being in the running for a Best Supporting Actress award. Tune in this Sunday on CBS or Paramount+.