‘The Substance’ Isn’t the First Time Demi Moore Put Her Body On the Line for a Role

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | September 25, 2024 |

Demi Moore is getting a lot of buzz for her new movie The Substance, in which she portrays an aging aerobics instructor who takes, you guessed it, a substance that promises to create a younger, more beautiful version of herself. She’s previously spoken about how she put her body on the line for the role, even losing up to 20 pounds during filming and describing the lengths her character goes for beauty as “violent.”

But this isn’t the first role for which she’s resorted to violent measures. In a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning to promote the film, Moore admitted that she biked roughly 60 miles per day while filming Indecent Proposal in 1992 after giving birth to her daughter, Scout Willis, in 1991.

“I put so much pressure on myself. And I did have experiences of being told to lose weight and all of those. While they may have been embarrassing and humiliating, it’s what I did to myself because of that,” she said.

“I think [Scout] was like, five or six months old when we were shooting,” she explained. “I was feeding her through the night, getting up in the dark with a trainer and a headlamp, biking all the way to Paramoutn, even on location where we were shooting, then shooting a full day which is usually a 12-hour day and then starting all over again.”

All women feel the pressure to be thin, especially after childbirth, and especially when they’re in the public ete. Now, Moore can see just how violently she was treating her body, and wonders why it felt so important at the time.

“Even just the idea of what I did to my body it’s like so crazy, so ridiculous. But you look back and you kind of go, ‘Did it really matter that much?’ Probably not. But at the time I made it mean everything.”

Moore came of age as an actress during the height of the diet culture that has always ruled Hollywood and American society in general, so for her to get to play this role at this time of her life when it allows her to reflect on her early experiences with fame and admit the psychological damage they caused, feels like a well-deserved full circle moment.

The Substance is in theaters now.