Demi Moore knew what she was getting into by appearing nude in her new movie, “The Substance.”
In the movie, which premiered this week at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Moore, 61, plays an aging movie star who decides to take a drug that creates a younger version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley.
Moore said she and director Coralie Fargeat knew how to approach the idea of being naked on screen.
“Going into it, it was really spelled out, the level of vulnerability and rawness that was really required to tell this story,” Moore said during a May 20 press conference in Cannes.
“And it was a very vulnerable experience and just required, I think, kind of going into it with a sensitivity and a lot of conversation about what we were trying to accomplish, how we were going to approach it and I think finding that common ground of mutual trust.”
Moore also gushed about working with Qualley.
“I had someone who was a great partner who I felt very safe with,” she said.
“We obviously were quite close in certain moments — naked — and allowed us a lot of levity in those moments at how absurd those certain situations were … but, ultimately, it’s just about, I think, really directing your communication and mutual trust.”
Early reaction to “The Substance,” which also stars Dennis Quaid, has been overwhelmingly positive, with Variety reporting it received an 11-minute standing ovation. It’s unclear when the movie will be released.
Moore is no stranger to appearing nude. She bared all as a dancer in the 1996 movie “Striptease” and appeared nude in 1995’s “The Scarlet Letter.” She also famously graced the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991 without any clothes while pregnant with daughter Scout.
“I understand what impact it had on the world,” she said on Naomi Campbell’s “No Filter” series in 2021. “On women, on our permission to embrace ourselves in a pregnant state. But it was a moment that I was taking to really be in myself and be expressing myself and not trying to be anything other than me.”
