Demi Moore revealed in an emotional Golden Globes acceptance speech she was called a “popcorn actress” 30 years ago — a comment she said “corroded” her.
“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress and, at that time, I made that mean that this wasn’t something that I was allowed to have, that I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged,” Moore said while accepting her award for best performance by a female actor in a motion picture, musical or comedy, for “The Substance.”
“I bought in, and I believed that, and that corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it — maybe I was complete, maybe I’ve done what I was supposed to do,” she continued.
It was at that “low point,” Moore said, that she received the script for “The Substance,” which she called “magical, bold, courageous, out of the box [and] absolutely bonkers.”
“The universe told me that you’re not done,” Moore said.
Moore, who revealed her Golden Globe was the “first time [she’s] ever won anything as an actor,” then thanked “The Substance” director and writer Coralie Fargeat, her co-star Margaret Qualley and the “people who believed in [her] when [she hadn’t] believed in [herself].”
Moore also connected her own struggles to the themes in “The Substance,” noting the movie speaks to “moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or successful enough, or basically just not enough.”
“I had a woman say to me, just know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick,” Moore said. “And so today I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me and for the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong.”
