We know the drill: When Hollywood actresses hit a certain age, they’re pushed off the industry conveyor belt. Some find a few roles, or perhaps a gig as a brand ambassador, spokesperson, or fitness guru. That’s the world of Elisabeth Sparkle, as played by Demi Moore, in Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror industry satire “The Substance.” However, this film represents the best role in the 61-year-old Moore’s career.
In the mid-1990s, Moore was a star after “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Ghost,” “A Few Good Men,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Disclosure.” She hit her financial peak with the 1996 “Striptease” — $12 million, which inspired snarky asides of “Gimme Moore” — but the reviews were bad and the box office not much better. Her career shifted into smaller movies and smaller roles (including a standout turn in 2011’s “Margin Call”), many of which didn’t deserve her presence and, well, sparkle.
This year Moore had a delicious and dastardly supporting role as the betrayed Ann Woodward in “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans,” but in “The Substance,” Moore is very much back in the lead. Sometimes she’s naked, other times beneath layers of prosthetics, but her force is undeniable throughout.
In Fargeat’s second feature to wow and repulse festival audiences after 2017’s feminist horror “Revenge,” Elisabeth is fired for being too over-the-hill for the popular workout program she hosts at the end of her decorated acting career. Desperate, she tries an experimental, self-administered medical procedure in which a yellow, oozy serum, once injected, produces a “better version” of Elisabeth through horrifying means. That version is Sue (Margaret Qualley), a third of Elisabeth’s age and with all her pre-aging joie de vivre restored. There’s one very important rule, though: Sue and Elisabeth must alternate being in the world every other week while the other one goes into a coma. Think the eager ingenue Sue, now the star of Elisabeth’s former show, will abide by the rules?
In “The Substance,” Moore veers from projecting internalized self-loathing to an all-out unraveling as Sue siphons off Elisabeth’s remaining beauty, sucking the life from her in the process. You’ve never quite seen Moore in woman-on-the-verge mode as you have here; she is a real contender for Best Actress at the upcoming 2024 Cannes Palme d’Or ceremony. Receiving that honor from Greta Gerwig’s jury would be a wonderful gesture to welcome Moore back as she enters an “incredible third act” (the words of her co-star Dennis Quaid at the “Substance” festival press conference) with a nuanced, juicy role for which she’s long overdue.
IndieWire spoke with Demi Moore in one of her first one-on-one interviews for “The Substance” at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
IndieWire: We all came out of this movie in rapture after the Sunday morning press screening. This is one of my favorite films of the festival. Did you watch the movie here for the first time?
Demi Moore: First of all,thank you so much. That’s so exciting to hear. Really. I had seen an earlier version, and so the other night was, in fact, my first time. I had seen it maybe two months before, so this was my first time seeing it with an audience and completed.
What’s your reaction to the reactions, which have been ecstatic?
As you can see from watching it, starting with it on paper, it felt risky. It was one [where] you don’t know if it’s going to all come together or work. It’s what you hope. And so, in all honesty, I think I’m still feeling a little bit of shock, awe. I feel extremely humbled by the overall experience. I’ve never had a Cannes premiere, so to just be in the theater with people who just love cinema was also just a mind-blowing experience and really encouraging, considering our current times and issues around getting people in the theater. Just to feel that that love of cinema on top of everything else was just extraordinary.
This might be your best performance and best role ever. Where do you place it?
In terms of it being kind of complex and nuanced, and also this being very different… There’s not a lot of dialogue in this, and [with] the level of rawness and vulnerability that it called for, it’s definitely up there.
What was the process with Coralie casting you? Now I can’t picture anyone else in this role.
First of all, she’s been living with this story, breathing it, for even long before it ever got to me [the movie entered production almost two years ago in Paris]. The care and protection for the vision that she had was apparent. While she was meeting with different actors, we had Zoom meetings and happened to be able to meet in person, but we met six times before she settled on who she wanted to go with for this.
You’ve never done a true horror movie before, except for maybe “The Seventh Sign” in 1988.
I can watch serial killer programs all day. I can fall asleep to them. It’s literally some weird thing that they’re relaxing for me. I don’t know. I’ve always been a little squeamish with [horror] but in this case, with this being phantasmagoric, the body horror… I never related to it, even though it is exactly what you just said in that way. Maybe that’s because it’s important for me to approach it from the inside out in that core of what is relatable to this woman to me.
Did you identify with Elisabeth Sparkle? It’s this sort of classic story of an actress getting older. Hollywood never knows what to do with them, and while you never stopped working, obviously the kind of roles that you do and what you get offered changes.
If we step back from it being about an actor, [the film is more about] a desire to have validation, to be seen, to be appreciated, to belong, and what it is to feel rejected and to feel not-enough, that there’s something wrong with you. When you add into it the aspect of aging — which is really about our inability to control — [it becomes] an exploration of a lack of acceptance of self. What really connected me was the unique way in which [Coralie Fargeat chose] to tell this story.
There’s a lot of nudity from everyone in this movie that’s essential to the story and never gratuitous. Did Coralie have to talk you into that, or were you ready to just go and do it?
There were a lot of really thoughtful discussions and an important need to feel safe and really understand how it was going to be used. It’s interesting, I’ve seen a couple of things where, of course, for the headline, they’re making it all about that. And that I have to say [it is] disappointing because it’s not about that. It isn’t about nudity, it’s about the vulnerability.
What’s maybe different here is that you’re working with a female filmmaker for these kinds of scenes versus like “Striptease” or “Indecent Proposal” where you’re being directed by a man. Something must have been different here.
I don’t know if it was, or even something that I thought about. For me, it was about the context, the context of how the nudity was going to be used. It was all spelled out on paper, so I really understood what we needed to bring to it to. [Margaret Qualley and I] had each other for most of those moments and I think [the filmmakers] went out of their way to make the set feel as secure and comfortable as it possibly could be. But I think the biggest difference is that [the nudity] wasn’t sexualized. It was really more in reflection of oneself in that way of what is it to be with yourself.
In terms of the sort of split between Sue and Elisabeth Sparkle, how much did you see them and play them as kind of the same person with the same brain? Or do you see Sue as more of an offshoot and ideal form, not only in appearance, but also in her behaviors?
If you imagine — let’s take identical twins, and maybe that’s not even a good example. We had a lot of discussions trying to figure out some connections, some logic, so we were all operating from the same thinking.The best way I can think of it was that while we share consciousness, that physical body [with] a cellular memory, [each] was creating its own experience. The longer Sue had her time awake, you can kind of see the lack of regard she starts to have for Elisabeth the more times she’s in her own body.
You’re under a great deal of horror-movie makeup and prosthetics in this film. As Elisabeth begins to decay, the effects start simply enough with necrosis on her hand. But it gets much worse. How long did that take on a day-to-day basis?
Well, the finger, the hand was maybe three hours, but generally the majority was anywhere from six to nine hours.
And all of this is practical.
That was one of Coralie’s major creative choices. She wanted to use practical effects as much as possible. When you read a script on paper and you’re reading [about] the monster, it’s like, oh, yeah, that seems really great. [But] it is a very big commitment and I have a huge respect for people who’ve taken on roles where the entire movie from start to finish is prosthetics.
In a way, it was part of what made this intriguing to do. On the more emotional, mental level of that disintegration is the idea of when one is stealing from the other, she was stealing from herself. It has to come from somewhere. None of it’s for free, and it wasn’t just aging — it was deforming. I think the metaphor of that is very powerful. It’s like chasing perfection so often can leave you in a worse place than where you started.
What doors do you hope this movie might open?
I wouldn’t want to put any locked-in thing [out there]. What I love is this was a rich, complex, demanding role that gave me an opportunity to really push myself outside of my comfort zone, and in the end to feel like I explored and grew not only as an actor, but as a person. And so if there’s any hope, it’s really just to kind of re-engage in a way. I feel like I took a real step back for a long time and really questioned even whether or not this is what I should be doing. This was a part of waking myself up.
“The Substance” will open from MUBI later this year.
