JULIANNE

MOORE

BY JASON GAY PHOTOGRAPHY BY LACHLAN BAILEY STYLING BY ALEX WHITE

The Academy Award–winning actress has inhabited an inimitable range

of characters, appearing in 70-plus films. Beyond Hollywood, Moore has also

channeled her voice into one of her most notable roles yet: activist.

ACTING & ACTIVISM INNOVATOR

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D

O I NEED TO persuade you on Julianne

Moore? Come on. This is Julianne

Moore we’re talking about. The

intensely credible, never-bad-in-

anything actress with a career that

now spans almost four decades and

includes work with Robert Altman; Louis Malle;

the Coen Brothers; Alfonso Cuarón; Todd Haynes;

Kimberly Peirce; Tom Ford; Paul Thomas Anderson;

Rebecca Miller; Julie Taymor; Moore’s husband,

Bart Freundlich; and probably 38 other really good

directors I’m forgetting. The Julianne Moore who’s

been nominated for five Academy Awards, winning

best actress in 2015 for playing a professor confront-

ing Alzheimer’s disease in Still Alice. The Julianne

Moore who won an Emmy for playing—no, transform-

ing into—Sarah Palin in Game Change. Who played

Maude flippin’ Lebowski, for crying out loud. “She’s

just a lovely person,” says The Dude himself, Moore’s

co-star in The Big Lebowski, Jeff Bridges. Bridges calls

her Julie, just as many close to her do.

Moore’s résumé is a staggering, no-BS run of smart

choices with integrity—the type of career that any

aspiring actor dreams of. Moore, who grew up traips-

ing around the earth in a military family, has humble

roots, too. She got her start in soap operas, on As the

World Turns, where, in the twilight of the Reagan

administration, she played not only a character

named Frannie Hughes, but also Frannie’s mysterious

half-sister, Sabrina, who arrived in Frannie’s life and

raised hell. (Soap operas truly are the best.)

Moore’s one of those celebrity supernovas who

seems to get it, who has this fame and glamour yet

manages to live a life in New York City that appears

rather, well, normal—or at least as close to nor-

mal as an Oscar-winning actor’s life can be. She and

Freundlich have been together for more than two

decades. The couple has a 17-year-old daughter, Liv,

and a 21-year-old son, Cal. If you come to town on a lazy

weekend morning, you might look over in the brunch

line at Russ & Daughters, and there she is, her red hair

the unmistakable giveaway, one of the great actors of

her generation, waiting for lox like everyone else.

There’s power in that—that ability to be famous in

plain sight—and in recent years, Moore has increas-

ingly channeled her profile into activism, most

notably around the issue of gun violence. She’s as infu-

riated about what’s happening as many Americans

are, and what makes Moore’s participation persuasive

is that she’s not coming at this with the accoutre-

ments of stardom—Listen to me, I’m a celebrity!—but

as a mother, a neighbor, a friend who simply wants

what we all want, which is that our children can come

home every day from school. “Julianne’s been a very

courageous voice,” says Moore’s friend Shannon

Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun

Sense in America. “She’s obviously a megawatt super-

star, but first and foremost, she’s a mom who cares

about everyone’s kids.”

MY SIT-DOWN WITH Moore happens on a warm late-

summer afternoon on Manhattan’s Upper East Side,

inside a townhouse that’s been commandeered for

a photo shoot for this magazine. As the crew breaks

things down, Moore and I have been relegated to a

tiny back room behind the kitchen filled with chairs,

a treadmill and an inflatable exercise ball. Basically,

we’re doing this interview in a stranger’s pantry.

But Moore is an unflappable pro. It’s back-to-

school season in New York, and Liv and Cal are

beginning senior years in high school and college,

respectively. Liv, who worked as a production assis-

tant on Freundlich’s and Moore’s recent film, After

the Wedding, is busy applying to college. Cal, mean-

while, is at Davidson, where he’s a member of the

basketball team on which Steph Curry once played.

That’s right: Julianne Moore is a bona fide sports

parent, cheering in the stands for too many games

to count. Cal—who’s also a budding composer and

songwriter—made the Davidson team as a walk-on,

which is no easy feat. “We’re very proud of him,”

CHARACTER STUDY

“She’s obviously

a megawatt superstar,”

says Shannon Watts,

the founder of Moms

Demand Action for Gun

Sense in America, “but

first and foremost, she’s

a mom who cares about

everyone’s kids.” Celine

by Hedi Slimane top

and pants, Bulgari High

Jewelry ring and Chris-

tian Louboutin shoes.