62 Tatler July 2019 tatler.com[Moore had been married before, in her early twenties,
to the actor-director John Gold-Rubin. After they divorced,
she threw herself into her career. ‘It wasn’t until I was in my
early thirties and I was really unhappy that I realised I
hadn’t made my personal life a priority,’ she says. ‘I realised:
“I really want this. I want to be married. I want to have
children.”’ She had to take control of her own life: ‘Growing
up in the late Seventies, I definitely got the message that it
was important to have a career and that I had to work to
make that happen. But there was this idea that you don’t
need to work for your personal life – that it was supposed to
be like a romantic comedy: you meet someone, have a couple
of dates and there you go. That’s just not true,’ she says,
with fierce emphasis. ‘Life is finite. This idea that you can
do whatever you want at whatever time, it’s not true in
terms of work and it’s not true in terms of having a family.’
(In terms of work, her children fleeing the coop is a boon:
‘My work will no longer be bound by the school year. That’s
been the biggest challenge. Right now, I can’t just go to
Australia or Hungary or wherever to make a film [during
school holidays]. I haven’t done it for over 20 years.’)
Moore’s was a nomadic childhood. Her father, Peter, was
a helicopter pilot and a paratrooper, whose military career
took his family, including Moore’s Scottish-born mother,
Anne, and her two younger siblings to Nebraska, Alaska,
Alabama, Georgia, Texas, the Panama Canal Zone and,
when she was 16, Germany. Moore moved back to the US
to study theatre at Boston University, then to New York,
where she began working off Broadway. Her first screen
role was in the American soap opera As the World Turns, for
which she won an Emmy, but she didn’t make her first
film, Tales From the Dark Side, until she was 29 – no bad
thing, she believes: ‘I think it’s hard to blossom with early
success,’ she says. ‘You don’t know who you are, you don’t
understand what your responsibilities are.’
Still, she pays age little heed, and her stellar career – she
had had four Oscar nominations, for her roles in Boogie
Nights, The End of the Affair, Far from Heaven and The Hours,
before finally winning the Best Actress trophy for Still Alice,
at the age of 54 – has disproved the received wisdom that
decent roles for women dry up after a certain age. ‘That
narrative is so tired,’ she says, her scorn for the topic alive
in every syllable. ‘Every actor has the fear that roles will dry
up, because there just aren’t that many roles ever.’
Though not when you’re as good and adventurous an
actress as Julianne Moore. She’s been shooting The Glorias:
A Life on the Road, as one of four actresses playing the feministicon, Gloria Steinem, at different periods in her life – the
other Glorias include 13-year-old Lulu Wilson as the teenage
Steinem and Alicia Vikander as Gloria in her twenties and
thirties. (The stellar cast also includes Bette Midler.) ‘It’s
not a regular biopic,’ says Moore. ‘Our director, Julie Taymor,
always does really interesting stuff.’ Moore spent time with
Steinem to prepare for the film. ‘She’s so kind,’ she enthuses,
‘and very self-deprecating, with a great sense of humour’–
before ruefully confiding, ‘But I can never talk around her. I can
never think of anything to say. I just kind of... disintegrate.’
That’s hard to believe. Moore does not seem like the
disintegrating sort. But she’s also not the sort to suggest
that they themselves were too strong to need #MeToo. She
has, she says, seen significant improvements in the industry
thanks to the movement. ‘The atmosphere has changed,
people are more respectful to each other on set, there’s
much less disparaging language and people are careful
with one another physically.’ She’s noticing a similar
change off-set too, with more nuanced discussions about
power dynamics and appropriate behaviour.
‘We’ve been inculcated with this idea that men were
allowed to do certain things,’ she says, her eyes alert with
passion. ‘Even something casual, like a man you didn’t know
kissing you hello rather than shaking your hand – we used to
tolerate that because we were told: “He doesn’t mean anything
by it, he’s just being friendly.”’ It’s a hot topic – Joe Biden,
Obama’s Vice President, whose 2020 presidential run is now
underway, issued a defence about misconduct allegations
saying that ‘social norms have begun to change... I get it,’ after
several women accused him of ‘inappropriate touching’ –
holding their shoulders, hugging them and, in one alleged
instance, sniffing one woman’s hair.
‘My husband and I were discussing just this,’ reports
Moore, ‘and he said: “That kind of stuff ’s okay at a family
party.” And I said, “No, it’s not.” I remember someone
who was that way when I was a kid and I was uncomfortable
and I couldn’t say anything. The only person I could say
something to was my sister, and she felt the same way. So
this sort of discussion is a real change, and it’s important.’
But it’s also one about which she has her own sense of
humour: ‘It’s like Gloria Steinem says,’ she says, with a great,
broad grin. ‘We’re not going to do to men what has been
done to women. You don’t need to be afraid to give us the
power. You don’t need to be afraid that we’re going to
dominate you, because we don’t want to.’ Unless, of course,
you’re a Breton-stripe-wearing waiter who’s whisking away
your food before you’ve finished. ( Gloria Bell is out 7 June‘Losing Karl was a shock to everybody –we all believed he’d live forever’07-19COVERSTORY.indd 62 08/05/2019 13:03