Demi Moore has a tried-and-true approach when choosing her next film roles — and it might not be what you think.
The veteran actress appeared on a recent episode of Sean Evans‘ popular Hot Ones video interview series, revealing that a certain degree of risk is crucial to the projects she takes on — including this year’s buzzy body horror flick The Substance and even her seminal hit Ghost.
“It really means that it was holding something that was worth the risk,” Moore said when asked by Evans what she meant when she previously commented that The Substance script may yield “something extraordinary or could be an absolute disaster.”
“And I felt that way also about Ghost because it had so many different genres mixed together that, truly, I thought, ‘This could either be amazing or a f—ing disaster.’ Either way, it’s usually the kind of juice that says, ‘Step in. Take the risk. Roll the dice. Let’s see what happens.’”
It can definitively be said that the risk paid off in both cases: Ghost was a sleeper hit upon its release in 1990 — a supernatural romance thriller also starring Patrick Swayze that grossed half a billion at the box office and which has since yielded a legacy rife with pop culture parodies and iconic film moments. It has now spawned a potential forthcoming remake from Channing Tatum. Meanwhile, The Substance — a Cannes Festival darling — has also spawned a formidable box office, as well as driven a substantive portion of internet discourse and meme-making.
Elsewhere during the interview, the unofficial Brat Pack member commented on her status as an “iconic crier,” mentioning that Ghost “scared the crap” out of her due to its weighty and emotional subject material.
“I think because it was — also to be such a young person dealing with the loss of your partner — in reading the script, I was so overwhelmed at the kind of grief that I was going to have to tap into, and I know that there’s this kind of iconic thing about the one-eye [crying] — I didn’t plan that, I have no control over that, that’s just how it happened,” she explained. “But that [film] kind of helped me get over a hurdle of my own.”
In taking on the “wings of death,” Moore also spoke about the future of moviemaking, saying that one of the threats she views as existential to the industry is the “loss of the cinema experience.”
“I think the risk — not just in cinema, but in life in general — is that we’re moving towards too much isolation,” the G.I. Jane star said. “I think it’s our communal experience that allows us to connect with one another when we have those shared experiences. While I truly love streaming, appreciate it and think that there is an aspect that is quite additive for all of us, I hope that we can find a middle ground with bringing us all back to the theater too, to really not lose that.”
