Oh, what a night! When The Substance hit theaters, it became a sleeper hit that had everybody talking. Here was a triumphant return for Demi Moore, in a movie so unexpectedly disgusting, poignant and confrontational that surely most A-listers wouldn’t dare attach themselves to it. And sure enough, Moore’s powerful performance garnered her a level of recognition that has largely evaded her throughout her career. Nominations started pouring in, and when she received one for Best Actress at the 97th Academy Awards, it sent a firm signal. Not only was Moore back and better than ever in the role of a lifetime, but she had perhaps done the unthinkable and made horror respectable. The genre has had an infamously tough time on the awards circuit over the years, and a growing band of fearless and imaginative creative professionals are to be thanked for the new wave of horror that we are currently experiencing.
When Moore won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in January, it was a landmark moment for her. During her acceptance speech, she detailed how a producer had once labeled her a “popcorn actress,” effectively telling her she was profitable but not respectable. This was the first major award she had ever won, despite being among the Hollywood elite for decades. We all dared to dream that this meant she was in with a real chance of winning the Oscar — something she absolutely deserved with her performance in The Substance, as well as with her years of hard work, not only on movie sets, but in the cultural zeitgeist. It is only fitting that this strange horror movie, that so focused on female body image, would be the jewel in the crown of her incredible career.
Body Image Has Always Been Central To Demi Moore’s Career

In her 2019 memoir Inside Out, Moore detailed her turbulent upbringing that led to her wanting to escape it all via a life in the arts. She started as a young model before transitioning into acting. Having valiantly kicked an alcohol and cocaine habit quite early on in her career, she quit smoking to appease her then-boyfriend Emilio Estevez, she gained some weight, as quitters tend to do, and found herself repositioning her addiction from substances to food. As early as One Crazy Summer, she was asked to lose weight in order to be cast, and by the time she went to film A Few Good Men just weeks post-partum, she was pushing herself to extremes to get in shape. She describes an unpleasant exchange with director Adrian Lyne prior to filming Indecent Proposal, in which he tells her he didn’t want her looking “like a man,” and that she was too lean and muscular for his project. He demanded she gain ten pounds before shooting commenced.

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Later, her decision to cut her hair into a pixie crop was unconventional at best, and Moore said she was relieved that Ghost director Jerry Zucker didn’t ask her to wear a wig. Not long after was her infamous Vanity Fair cover, shot by photographer to the stars, Annie Leibovitz. The pictures had been more of a personal project for Moore than anything else, as she found pregnancy to be a very beautiful experience — one she wanted to capture with a photoshoot by one of the world’s best. It was a divisive sensation, with some hailing it as a step towards eradicating taboos surrounding pregnancy, and others finding it obscene, a sentiment that largely boiled down to the idea that mothers could not be sexy.
Then along came Striptease, a movie that gained as much attention for Moore’s paycheck as for her on-screen nudity. Again, the actress was eager to use the movie to question societal standards and taboos. She caught heat for the casting of her daughter Rumer in the role of her character’s daughter, a role that required the young child to see her mother dancing topless. Moore has long been outspoken about her liberal approach to parenting, and considered the movie just another step in raising children that wouldn’t tie shame to nudity, and in proving that motherhood was not the death knell of a woman’s sexuality. G.I. Jane would pull a 180, requiring her to bulk up and train with Navy SEALs, a challenge she threw herself into. According to Moore, after years of her career defining her body image, wrapping that shoot was when she finally decided to let go of her hangups, and embrace her “natural weight,” without extreme exercise or dieting.
The 2000s tabloid culture would carry on the wave of attention Moore received for her personal life and for her looks, with tacky magazines picking apart every aspect of her appearance and romantic relationships. You couldn’t go grocery shopping and not see a magazine with her picture on the cover, and brutal captions targeting her body and her relationship with actor Ashton Kutcher, who was sixteen years her junior. Even twenty years into her respectable career, public and media attention would not let up, and it all centered on how her appearance, her private life, her very existence challenged how women were viewed, particularly famous actresses.

‘The Substance’ Was What Demi Moore Needed, and It Needed Her

Image via Mubi

After years of a more scaled-back work life, The Substance came out of nowhere and put Demi Moore firmly back on the map. But the culture has dramatically shifted. It is a different world to the one Moore’s entire career existed in, one where all forms of femininity are embraced, and people are more aware than ever of the corrosive effects of negative body image. Of course, Demi Moore is an objectively beautiful woman, and if anything, she became the figurehead for a new unofficial campaign. Before, it was all about how mothers were still sexy, and now it’s all about how older women are still sexy. Whether she wanted it or not, Demi Moore’s decades-long career in Hollywood was just as much about challenging the way people think as it was delivering strong performances. Narratively and thematically, The Substance is the culmination of a life and career defined by body image — something Moore probably understands better than most.
Not only was the movie a huge hit that brought about an incredible comeback for Moore, but its recognition on the awards circuit has proven that the movie really spoke to people, and nailed its message. It took a bold actress who wasn’t afraid to shed every preconception that people had of her, and dived into all the dysfunction, ugliness and profundity that Coralie Fargeat’s script offered. It is possible that had another actress been cast as Elisabeth Sparkle, perhaps someone less known or less tied to her physical appearance, the impact of the movie wouldn’t have been quite so great. But because Moore has spent forty-plus years being seen simultaneously as a sex symbol, a household name, and a trailblazer, it feels like only she could really wring every last drop of juice out of The Substance, and bring it fully to life.
She may not have won the Oscar, but on this occasion, that old cliché may be right: “It’s an honor just to be nominated.” The nomination in itself, and the many other wins the movie secured her, are symbolic enough of a life well lived, a career well worked, and offer a full circle moment for an actress whose body image has more or less haunted her. It is by embracing that image and taking control of it that she has truly proven critics wrong. If Demi Moore can take a long hard look in the mirror, then maybe the rest of us can, too.

The Substance

Release Date

September 20, 2024

Runtime

140 Minutes

Director

Coralie Fargeat

Writers

Coralie Fargeat