In the span of just seven years in the ’90s, she starred in Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, The Scarlet Letter, Striptease, G.I. Jane, and more. Success gave her the opportunity to reframe the traumas and challenges of the way she grew up. Would being raised in a more nurturing, reliable family have been nice, and would it have helped her develop better self-esteem? Maybe, she says. But it also might have kept her content, lacking the motivation to make a better life on her own. “While I may not have realized that as I was in survival mode, I can really see I have a certain strength and drive and determination, and I had, as a very young person with no safety net, a willingness to take risks because I had nothing to lose,” she says. “It’s given me things that, if I look back, I wouldn’t change.”
Making The Substance showed Moore how far she’s come in other ways too. In Inside Out, she wrote candidly about the ways she tried to control her body throughout her career, striving to create a physical form that would make herself feel comfortable being seen on camera. While nursing her second child, she exercised so intensely to prepare for the military uniform she’d be wearing in A Few Good Men that her daughter’s growth was stunted. Now she’s taken every opportunity to share the message of the film, one she believes deeply: that what’s most damaging is not the shame or expectations that other people put on us, but the decision we make to let those forces shape how we see ourselves.
