A shadow has fallen across Demi Moore’s face. We’re in a hotel room in London that’s been converted into a makeshift press junket, and the big, black poster for her new film The Substance is wreaking havoc with the lighting. Flustered men, who probably had pictures of the star on their bedroom walls decades ago, swirl around her with tool belts and boxes.
The woman in question is unbothered. “It’s just reflecting,” Moore tells one of the men, between sips of water from an enormous tumbler. She points to a pile of camera detritus in front of her.
“If we put it in front of the pole just there, but behind the sign, it’ll absorb the light.” The man, far too awed to even think of challenging her, does exactly what he is told. A shuffle, a switch and a loud clang later, the shadows are gone.
Moore takes another sip of her water. The 61-year-old, it should be said, didn’t ask for and certainly doesn’t need artificial lighting. This is a woman who was built in a movie star factory 40 years ago, giving her an almost supernatural ability to appear lit from within.
It also lends her a slight uncanniness. Moore has always been so famous, so photographed and so debated – and that’s before we even mention culture-rattling work such as Ghost , Indecent Proposal and A Few Good Men – that you’re forced to do a double take in her presence. Yes, it is her, you find yourself thinking.
My god...
it’s actually, really her . The French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat knew .