Biography

		Facts
		Profile
		Film Career
		Awards & Nominations

Well, she's certainly hard to ignore. Having made 24 movies in the Nineties, Julianne Moore was that decade's 11th Busiest Actor, alongside Robert De Niro (though still miles behind Samuel L. Jackson, with 36). And she's set to improve upon her placing over the next 10 years. But Moore is not just about quantity. Inhabiting her characters rather than simply Being A Star, she's become the equal of such recent luminaries as Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange and, yes, even Meryl Streep. Her directors agree. Andre Gregory said she possessed "the sensuality and urgency of a young Joan Crawford, but with more depth, more contradictions", while Louis Malle said she reminded him of Jeanne Moreau. High praise, well deserved.

She was born Julie Smith in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on the 3rd of December, 1960. Her father, Peter, was a judge in the US Army's Judge Advocate General Corps. Her mother, Ann, was his childhood sweetheart - a Scot who'd become a psychiatric social worker. Peter's work took them to Army bases all over. 

They lived in Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, Nebraska, New York, Juneau in Alaska (between 1971 and 72), then Panama and Germany - two dozen locations around the globe (Moore claims it's made her more adaptable). In her early school years, Julie, the oldest of three children, was skinny, with spectacles. "I was a complete geek", she says. "You know, there's always the kid who's too short, the kid who wears glasses, the kid who's not athletic. Well, I was all three".

Various things drew her to acting. First, she was a big reader. She says now that this has been a huge advantage, as she can easily pick a good script. But it also acquainted her with fictional drama - she already had "a sense of emotional drama" from her parents who'd discuss their work-cases at the dinner-table. What Julie needed was confidence. 

Moving to Germany for her High School years - she'd graduate from Frankfurt's American High School in 1979 - she had her hair cut and bought contact lenses. "People were suddenly much nicer to me", she recalls. "It was shocking, emotionally". Even her parents were taken aback by the transformation. Watching Julie in a school production of Sleeping Beauty, her mother (something of a beauty herself) was heard to exclaim "My God, Peter - she's PRETTY!"

Encouraged to pursue acting by her English teacher, Julie decided to go for it, much to the chagrin of her parents who desired a more secure profession for her. Eventually, they came to a compromise. Julie would attend the School Of The Performing Arts at Boston University, majoring in Drama, thereby receiving the training she required and an all-round education. 

Graduating as a Bachelor Of Fine Arts, she moved to New York to seek work. First though, there was her name - she couldn't use it. Attempting to register with the Actors' Guild, she found that every variation had been taken. Consequently, she joined her mother's Christian name onto her own, and took her father's middle name as a surname - "So I didn't hurt anyone's feelings". Hence Julianne Moore.

Concentrating on theatre, she played off-Broadway in Serious Money and Ice Cream With Hot Fudge, and was Ophelia in Hamlet at the Guthrie (she'd often return to theatre - most notably with Al Pacino in Strindberg's The Father, and with Meryl Streep in An American Daughter, both in 1996). But her big break came in daytime TV (though, being Moore, she'd continue to work in theatre in the evenings). 

After appearing briefly in The Edge Of Night, she won a part in As The World Turns, a soap opera that had been running since 1956. Many stars had served part of their apprenticeship here - James Earl Jones and Martin Sheen in the Sixties, Swoosie Kurtz in the Seventies, Marisa Tomei, Courtney Cox and Meg Ryan in the Eighties. 

Both Parker Posey and Lauryn Hill would serve in the Nineties. Moore's part was interesting, a double. She played Frannie, a good girl who suffers the trauma of having no fewer than four boyfriends die on her, and also Sabrina, Frannie's wicked half-sister. It was great experience and Moore excelled, winning a Daytime Emmy in 1988. She also found love, marrying actor John Gould Rubin in 1986 (they'd divorce in the mid-Nineties).

While appearing in As The World Turns, Moore branched out somewhat by appearing as a friend of Valerie Bertinelli's in Judith Krantz's slushy I'll Take Manhattan. For a while though (as is so often the case), the only parts available were in horror and sci-fi flicks. There was Slaughterhouse 2, where a gang of youngsters is menaced by mutant-clown Pigsby Malone. 

Then, having left her soap career behind, she was a mummy's victim in the movie version of Tales From The Darkside, then appeared alongside Fred Ward and Clancy Brown in the really-rather-good Cast A Deadly Spell, a Lovecraft-inspired thriller set in a fantastical Forties where magic is commonplace.

Now everything began to change. First she was excellent as Marlene Craven, the sassy and sussed real estate agent who cottons on to Rebecca De Mornay's beastliness in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. This was a chance given to her by director Curtis Hanson who had to fight to cast her, the producers believing a soap star would lower the tone. Next came another stroke of luck, Moore only having a small part (as Willem Dafoe's wife) in the execrable Madonna-vehicle Body Of Evidence. 

Memories of this were quickly swept away by Robert Altman's Short Cuts, where Moore grabbed many of the headlines by appearing naked from the waist down (in a part originally offered to Madeleine Stowe). Moore had earlier been up for Altman's The Player, but the ex-geek was deemed "too beautiful". Then came the first massive box-office success, as Anne Eastman, the sassy and sussed doctor who gets very, very suspicious of Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. The role was short but effective, seizing the attention of Steven Spielberg. It would pay dividends later.

For now Moore took her time, taking on a series of more testing projects. She played Aidan Quinn's waitress girlfriend in the Johnny Depp-starring comedy drama Benny & Joon, and appeared as Yelena in Louis Malle's film of an uninterrupted rehearsal of Chekov's Uncle Vanya. She was superb as Carol White in Todd Haynes' Safe (her first lead role), where a mother suddenly loses her immunity to absolutely everything. 

Next came a trio of big-budget efforts, as Hugh Grant's pregnant girlfriend in the comedy Nine Months: then as Electra, a computer hacker who helps Sylvester Stallone annihilate Antonio Banderas in Assassins: and finally as Dora Maar, alongside a particularly cantankerous Anthony Hopkins in Surviving Picasso. This last movie was made all the more difficult when, on Moore's arrival, director James Ivory apologetically told her "Sorry, we have to start with your nervous breakdown".

Her next movie, an artier affair concerning a fraught family reunion, was The Myth Of Fingerprints. It proved life-changing. By now, Moore's marriage had collapsed, she'd had a series of bad romances, her personal life was in tatters. She recalls going to meet director Bart Freundlich, angry at being unable to get her divorce finalised, pissed off that her car was in the shop. Half an hour late (she's never late), she DEMANDED to know why he wanted her in the movie. 

Freundlich stayed cool, explained his position and won her over. Though she didn't know it, he'd been terrified. She was the actor he wanted most (many directors say that if you get the classy Moore others will come on board). When she agreed, he did a dance of celebration on his stairs.

Yet, despite her initial antagonism, by the end of the first week of production, Moore found herself falling for Freundlich and made a move on him. He was worried, didn't expect it. She was astonished by her own behaviour. She was 35, he was 26, AND they were supposed to be working together. She called her friend Ellen Barkin for advice. She told Moore to back off: "Leave him alone. It's his first movie. You'll be able to do this, but he won't". Unable to resist, she ignored Barkin. The couple are still together today.

Now Moore really caught the eye of the world. First, Spielberg cast her as Doctor Sarah Harding, Jeff Goldblum's paleontologist girlfriend in Jurassic Park 2. Then she was porn star Amber Waves in Boogie Nights, coked up, grieving the loss of her child and fancying the pants off of Mark Wahlberg - earning an Oscar nomination for her pains. Then came the Coen Brothers fabulous The Big Lebowski, with Moore as a bizarro dominatrix demanding Jeff Bridges' sperm. Coincidentally, Moore did get pregnant during the filming, courtesy of Freundlich, not Bridges. Her son, Caleb, would be born in 1997, after a 37-hour labour which started the night before Moore's birthday and went all the way through to the day after. Ouch. Daughter Liv Helen would follow in 2002.

Next came a torrent of roles. She played a cameo as Distraught Woman in Chicago Cab (AKA Hellcab), victim Marion Crane's sister in the remake of Psycho, a grieving mother blaming Sigourney Weaver in A Map Of The World, and the manipulative Mrs Cheveley in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Later would come Altman's Cookie's Fortune, the Saturday Night Live spin-off The Ladies Man, and the short Not I, Neil Jordan's production of the Samuel Beckett play. She also joined forces once more with PT "Boogie Nights" Anderson for the excellent Magnolia, playing the guilty, suicidal young wife of dying patriarch Jason Robards.

Not I was the second time Moore had worked with Jordan. The year before, they'd made The End Of The Affair together. Based on a Graham Greene story, this saw Moore as Sarah Miles, a refined woman who finds sexual liberty in a torrid romance with Ralph Fiennes, in London during the Blitz. The role of Sarah Miles won her a second Oscar nomination. Freundlich helped take away the pain of losing to Hilary Swank by offering her an engagement ring, moments after the announcement.

Ellen Barkin once said of Moore that she was "always hysterical about the fact that she will never work again". Her output in 2001 would lead you to believe she had no time to be hysterical. First there was Hannibal, where Moore beat rivals Helen Hunt, Gillian Anderson and Cate Blanchett for the role of Clarice Starling. To perfect the character, she spent three days training with the FBI at Quantico, learning the correct procedures for cuffing suspects, handling guns and even running. During filming, the crew mocked her when they noticed that, though she was unperturbed by Gary Oldman's disgusting makeup and the sight of Anthony Hopkins eating the brain of a still-awake Ray Liotta, she was terrified by a herd of cows (she explained that she's a physical coward, but an emotional thrill-seeker).

2002 would see Moore as Wavey, the fancy-free New Ager who sent Kevin Spacey spinning off on a voyage of self-discovery in an adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's best-selling novel The Shipping News. There'd also be the Freundlich-directed World Traveler, a road movie stressing (once more) the importance of family, and there was Evolution, where Moore was Allison Read, a scientist helping David Duchovny work out how to stop one-cell aliens that squeeze a million years-worth of development into a few weeks. A tricky problem that, naturally, results in much running, and screaming.

Naturally, there would also be some heavier roles. In Far From Heaven, directed by Todd "Safe" Haynes, she and Dennis Quaid played an apparently perfect couple of 1950s Connecticut, so perfect that a local journalist has decided to write a feature explaining just how perfect they are. But their marriage is a sham, with Quaid a homosexual and Moore enduring unrequited love for their black gardener. Both put in tremendous performances, with Haynes finding an accurate balance between the separate public disdains for gay and mixed-race relationships.

From here, she'd move on to The Hours, a three-strand drama, set in three different times, all connected by Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Moore would star in the second segment, revisiting the Fifties as Cathy Whitaker, another woman trapped in a loveless marriage, but this time driven to attempt suicide and then leave her young family, only returning as an old lady once her son has taken his own life. Her initial silent despair and her ultimate defence of her own needs and actions, were highpoints of a movie that did not flinch from its harsh subject matter. 

Along with Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, she'd form part of the strongest female casts in years, and her efforts were recognised at the Venice Film Festival where she was voted Best Actress by the jury and the public. She was furthermore Oscar-nominated in the Best Supporting Actress division and, as she was also nominated as Best Actress for Far From Heaven, she became only the ninth actor to be nominated twice in the same year.

Following The Hours came Marie And Bruce, where she and Matthew Broderick played a married couple so incompatible their efforts to stay together are constantly undermined by their need to be apart. She was manic and demanding, made worse by his apathetic amiability and the film, based on a Wallace Shawn play, followed one day in their rapidly disintegrating union.

Next came the far more upbeat Laws Of Attraction, where she and Pierce Brosnan played competing divorce lawyers who get drunk and wake up next to each other. Now they battle even harder, only to get caned again and this time wake up wearing wedding rings. Directed by Peter Howitt, of Sliding Doors fame, this was an attempt at a Hepburn/Tracy-style rom-com that didn't quite come off. Nevertheless, Julianne would be back on top form that same year, 2004, with The Forgotten, headlining as a mother trying to cope one year after the death of her young son. Then things start to get weird as she's told that she's been delusional for a decade and never had a son. Seeking the truth, it becomes foggier and further away.

The Forgotten was creepy and fraught and was a surprise smash hit, opening at Number One and near doubling its budget. She had carried a hit for the first time. There was also mild controversy as, in a 3-part 42-page picture-story in W Magazine, she appeared nude. She defended herself on the grounds of tastefulness, as she'd been lying on her stomach on a sofa. It was notable that, although being seen worldwide as a brilliant actress, she was also considered, even at 45, to be hot stuff. Further proof of this was the contract she'd signed in 2002 to make her, alongside Halle Berry, the public face of Revlon.

After The Forgotten would come The Prize Winner Of Defiance, Ohio. Again set in the Fifties, this would see her as an unfulfilled mother of ten who, poorly supported by drunken hubbie Woody Harrelson, takes to entering competitions on the back of the products she buys. 

Proving a natural, she wins cash, cars and holidays, eventually keeping the family herself, the movie being based on the acclaimed feminist novel by Terry Ryan. Next would come Savage Grace, where she'd play real-life socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland, who married into money and was murdered in London in 1972 - causing a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. She'd then reunite with Evolution co-star David Duchovny for her husband's Trust The Man.

Given her workload, Moore doesn't get to spend much time in the 3-bedroom New York loft she purchased with Freundlich in 1999. Her reward will surely come soon. Having received a prestigious Piper Heidsick Award at the Sundance Festival, and having been four times nominated at the Academy Awards, it will be no surprise if she's a multi-Oscar winner by 2010. In fact, it will be a crime if she isn't.~ Dominic Wills

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