Demi Moore

Demi Moore Biography

Moore was born Demetria Gene Guynes, at November 11, 1962 in Roswell, New Mexico, and spent much of her childhood and teenage years in Perryopolis, Pennsylvania, a small town south of Pittsburgh. As a child, she had a difficult and unstable home life. Her biological father, Charles Harmon, left her mother, Virginia King, after a two-month marriage, before Moore was born.

As a result, Moore had the surname of her stepfather, Danny Guynes, on her birth certificate. Danny Guynes, who committed suicide in 1980, frequently changed jobs and made the family move a total of forty times. Moore's parents were also alcoholics and often fought and beat each other. Operations on Moore's left eye during childhood required her to wear an eyepatch.

Moore's family settled in Los Angeles in 1976. When Moore was sixteen, her then-friend, actress Nastassja Kinski, persuaded her to drop out of Hollywood's Fairfax High School to become an actress. In 1979 she met and then married her first husband songwriter Freddy Moore. By the time they divorced in 1985, she had acquired the last name Moore.

Once a pretty, sultry teenage model with a slightly subdued, aloof quality, Moore evolved into one of the top female screen stars of the 1990s. She began as a regular on ABC's staple of daytime drama, "General Hospital"; her husky voice and hushed line delivery seemed to lend itself well to the tense plots. Moore soon segued to features, making her debut in "Choices" (1981). She went on to appear in Charles Band's "Parasite" (1982) and Garry Marshall's "Young Doctors in Love" (1982). In 1984 she became a Hollywood mainstay, playing Michael Caine's vulnerable young daughter in "Blame It on Rio" and a callous model in "No Small Affair". Moore joined the female contingent of the "brat-pack", co-starring in "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985) and "Wisdom" (1986), a road movie directed by her then-fiancé Emilio Estevez.

Moore graduated to adult roles as the prophecy-bearing mother in "The Seventh Sign" (1988), a foul-talking hooker in Neil Jordan's misfire "We're No Angels" (1989) and the mourning, teary-eyed lover in the surprise hit "Ghost" (1990). She gave one of her better performances and moved into production when she co-produced Alan Rudolph's intriguing "Mortal Thoughts" (1991). The extremely popular "A Few Good Men" (1992) kept her in the public eye but the military courtroom proceedings largely kept her sidelined dramatically as the more prominent male characters occupied center stage. Moore shed more tears as Woody Harrelson's wife who sleeps with Robert Redford for a million dollars in Adrian Lyne's popular "Indecent Proposal" (1993). In Barry Levinson's thriller "Disclosure" (1994), she received a chance to shed her "nice girl" image, playing a ruthless corporate executive who becomes the target of a sexual harassment suit lodged by a disappointed employee and former lover, played by Michael Douglas. While many reviewers slammed the film for its skittish treatment of the issue, its implausibility and irrelevance to real world concerns, Moore received some favorable notices for her icy turn.

Moore made her debut in a costume epic as adulteress Hester Prynne in the misconceived and unpopular adaptation of Hawthorne's classic "The Scarlet Letter" (1995) opposite Gary Oldman and then segued to more contemporary times in "Now and Then" (1995), a drama she also co-produced focusing on childhood friendships. She followed with the title role of "The Juror" (1996) as a single mother pressured to influence a jury by a gangster (Alec Baldwin). Moore could also be heard as the voice of Esmerelda in Disney's animated version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (also 1996). She solidified her stature in Hollywood with a reported $12.5 million salary to play a single mother who turns to exotic dancing in "Striptease" (also 1996), making her the highest-paid actress in Hollywood.

Demi Moore Career

After quitting school, Moore went to work as a pin-up girl, modelled for European photographers, and worked at a collection agency. In the early 1980s, Moore posed for a series of photographs featuring full frontal nudity. These photos went unnoticed until after she became a star, and were eventually published in a German magazine and later in North America. Moore's film debut was in the 1982 3-D science fiction/horror film, Parasite, which was a hit on the drive-in circuit, ultimately grossing $6 million. However, Moore was not widely known until she played the part of Jackie Templeton on the ABC soap opera, General Hospital, from 1982 to 1983. Appropriately, she also had an uncredited cameo at the end of the 1982 spoof Young Doctors in Love.

In the mid 1980s, she was mentioned as being a member of the Brat Pack and appeared in the youth-oriented films St. Elmo's Fire and About Last Night. For a time during the 1990s, Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. She had a string of box-office successes, including Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for which she was the first actress to reach the $10 million salary mark. Among other films for which Moore was considered were Basic Instinct, Flashdance, Runaway Bride, and While You Were Sleeping.

Moore's reputation suffered in the mid 1990s when her starring vehicles The Scarlet Letter, The Juror, Striptease, and G.I. Jane (a movie in which Moore shaved off all her long hair on camera, leaving her head totally bald) failed at the box office and garnered mixed reviews. Demi Moore was a founding "celebrity investor" in the Planet Hollywood chain of international theme restaurants (modeled after the Hard Rock Cafe and launched in New York on October 22, 1991) along with Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In August 1991, Moore appeared nude on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine while seven months pregnant with her daughter Scout LaRue, with enormous attendant publicity. The image was endlessly parodied (including by Spy magazine, which placed her then-husband Bruce Willis's head on her body), but also spawned honest imitators as other pregnant celebrities posed nude. Moore again appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in August 1992, wearing only a body painted "suit".

After a break from her acting career, Moore returned to the screen as a former member of Charlie's Angels gone bad in the 2003 film Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. In 2006, she appeared in Bobby which featured an all-star cast including her husband Ashton Kutcher although they did not appear in any scenes together. On June 1st of 2007, her most recent film, Mr. Brooks, was released. She appeared in Jon Bon Jovi's longform video "Destination Anywhere" as Janie.

After a string of financial disappointments, Moore bounced back with "G.I. Jane" (1997), in which she played a female recruit training for the Navy SEALs. Receiving wildly mixed reviews, the film placed Number One at the box office. Perhaps signaling an upswing in her career, Moore also had a featured role as a psychiatrist in Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry" (1997) and then disappeared from movie screens for a lengthy stretch, retreating to Idaho to raise her daughters and appearing only in the public eye during media coverage of her 1998 split with Bruce Willis. Dipping her toes back into Hollywood waters in 2000, Moore took the lead role in the well-received but little-seen fantasy thriller "Passion of Mind," in which she played a woman living two entirely different lives—a widowed Rhode Island mom and a fast-track Manhattan literary agent--in two separate timelines, each dreaming about the other and neither knowing which life is actually the real one.

Another three years would pass before Moore would make another film, playing the villainous "fallen Angel" Madison Lee in the 2003 sequel "Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle" after being heavily recruited by star/producer Drew Barrymore, who conceived the role specifically for Moore. Looking unbelievably well-preserved and gorgeous at age 40—with the help of some strategic plastic surgery, speculation abounded—Moore made a major impact on-screen and off-screen nearly walked away with all of the film's publicity due to her high-profile relationship with 25-year-old actor Ashton Kutcher. Though many initially scoffed at the coupling and claimed it was a publicity stunt, the relationship endured and they married in September 2005 in a traditional Kabbalah ceremony.

Moore returned to onscreen vitality in an attempt to remake herself into a serious actress with a strong performance in “Bobby” (2006), former hubby-to-be Emilio Estevez’s engaging look at the 16 hours prior to Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of several guests and employees. She played aging lounge singer and raging alcoholic, Virginia Fallon, a role Moore was at first was reluctant to take because of the similarities to her mother, Virginia, who had a long, losing battle with booze. Starring opposite heavyweights Anthony Hopkins, William H. Macy and Helen Hunt, Moore held her own—and even stole a few scenes—with her mature and emotionally charged performance.

After a nine-minute standing ovation at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, critical kudos were heaped upon the film and talk of an Oscar nod for Moore circulated. Moore continued her comeback with starring roles in “Mr. Brooks” (2007), a thriller where she played a detective investigating a serial killer (Kevin Costner), and “Flawless” (lensed 2006), where she played an executive at a London-based diamond firm who teams up with an almost-retired janitor (Michael Caine) in a plot to steal from their employers.

Demi Moore Personal life

Moore's primary residence is in Hailey, Idaho, near the famous Sun Valley resort, although she spends much time in the Los Angeles area with Kutcher. She is a practicing follower of the Rabbi Philip Berg's Kabbalah Centre religion, and initiated Kutcher into the faith, having said that she "didn’t grow up Jewish, but... would say that been more exposed to the deeper meanings of particular rituals than any of friends that did". She is also a passionate raw foodist or live-vegan. She also is the mother of three daughters: Rumer Willis (born in 1988), Scout LaRue Willis (born in 1991), Tallulah Belle Willis (born in 1994). All three children are with her ex-husband, Bruce Willis.

Demi Moore Photos