Julianne Moore walks us through her legendary career, discussing her roles in 'As the World Turns,' 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park,' 'Boogie Nights,' 'The Big Lebowski,' 'Hannibal,' 'The Hours,' 'Children of Men,' 'Crazy, Stupid, Love,' 'Game Change,' 'Still Alice,' 'May December' and more.MAY DECEMBER is available on Netflix now, https://www.netflix.com/maydecemberDirector: Funmi SunmonuDirector of Photography: Ricardo PomaresEditor: Jess Lane; Estan EsparzaTalent: Julianne MooreProducer: Juliet LopezLine Producer: Romeeka PowellAssociate Producer: Emebeit BeyeneProduction Manager: Andressa Pelachi and Kevin BalashCamera Operator: AJ YoungSound : Justin FoxProduction Assistant: Brock Spitaels and Ariel LabasanSet Designer: Cedar JocksPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Jovan JamesSupervising Editor: Erica DillmanAssistant Editor: Fynn LithgowGraphics Supervisor: Ross Rackin
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I think every movie helps you grow as an actor.
00:02 If you don't feel like you're learning something or getting a little bit better or kind of expanding,
00:06 I feel disappointed in myself. I feel like there's something wrong. I have to find something.
00:10 Hi, I'm Julianne Moore and this is the timeline of my career.
00:27 I didn't realize that it was possible to be an actor. It was something that I did after school.
00:32 Then we moved to Frankfurt, Germany and I joined the drama club and I met the drama club teacher
00:37 and she was casting Molière's Tartuffe. I'd never even heard of Molière. It was kind of an amazing
00:44 experience to do this play with her. She said at the end of it, "You know, I think you're really
00:49 good. You know, I think you could do this for a living." It had never occurred to me that I would
00:53 do something like that. I'd never even seen a professional play. But she gave me a copy of
00:57 Dramatics magazine with some different schools in it and I came home with, you know, different
01:01 colleges where you could major in acting and I sat at the dinner table and said to my parents,
01:04 "I'm going to be an actor." I don't blame you for that. Please don't be kind to me. It only makes
01:10 it worse. It's not wrong to love somebody even when you know it can't. Why did it have to be
01:18 Seth? I love playing twins and as a role turns. There was a writer who came onto the show named
01:23 Douglas Marland and he was sort of a famous soap opera writer and he decided that he wanted to
01:28 write a really intense storyline for me. So my character's name Franny Hughes and she was the
01:34 daughter of the chief of staff of the hospital and she was sort of a heroine type. She was a damsel
01:39 in distress and he decided that he would give me an evil, you know, an evil twin. But in this case,
01:46 she was my evil half-sister cousin because we had the same dad but our moms were sisters. Ew.
01:56 He helped us find you. There's a bond between you. You're both creative people. You have
02:02 lots in common. That's why patients fall in love with their doctor sometimes, I guess.
02:07 It was such a thrill to get the opportunity to do that and to have a writer write me something
02:11 that was that complicated at the time at the very beginning of my career. But the thing that I
02:15 learned very quickly about performing twins is that it's really boring because you're always
02:19 by yourself. When I won the Emmy for "As the World Turns," I had actually already completed
02:24 my soap opera contract. I got a phone call just saying, "Hey, you won the Emmy!" And it was kind
02:30 of amazing. I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled, but also weird and I felt kind of disconnected
02:36 to it because I had already sort of completed this three years on the soap opera. It was certainly
02:41 an amazing validation. It's something that I never, never expected. It's a great memory of
02:47 my time on that show. The most exciting thing about "The Lost World" was Steven Spielberg.
02:58 Talk about a career-defining moment. I can remember being in his office and talking to
03:02 him about working on the movie and I was like, "What am I doing here at Steven Spielberg?"
03:07 And so fascinating to work with him too because he works with such alacrity. He works as if he's
03:13 making an independent movie. I've never seen anything like it. He has all of his equipment
03:17 at his disposal and all of these huge action sequences. It's very complicated, but he gets it
03:23 done. I think the most memorable thing about it was carrying around that baby dinosaur, which,
03:31 these are the days of animatronics, so it was before CG. It was an actual, heavy, mechanical
03:38 dinosaur. It weighed probably 70 pounds and it had a motor in it. They would turn the motor on
03:43 and you could hear it go, [dinosaur sound] and it would move like that too, like, [dinosaur sound]
03:50 and my arms and I have to run. I ran everywhere holding that dinosaur. I was like, "This is heavy
03:57 guys. Let me put it down." And it was so fun to be in a series that's become so iconic to us.
04:06 Have you seen Jack's house? No. You will.
04:10 Boogie Nights, wow, what a thrill that was. I was living in LA at the time. I lived in LA for a few
04:17 years in the 90s and I went to a party. A friend of mine said, "I want you to meet somebody because
04:21 he wants you to be in his movie." I met Paul and Paul was terrific and he was like, "You're going
04:26 to be in my movie, man." I was like, "I haven't read it yet, but yes, I'm going to read it."
04:31 I went home and I read it and I was like, "Yes." It's one of the best screenplays that I've ever
04:36 read and the part was so original and so exciting. If it's not a hit, I'm going to get kicked out of
04:42 my apartment. My landlord's a real jerk. Really? Why don't you take your pants off? It's important
04:48 I get an idea of your size. I had no reservations about Boogie Nights. I really didn't. It's funny
04:53 because I think there were some people in my life who I was working with who represented me
04:58 who felt, "Was it the right decision to make a movie about the porn industry?" But it was very
05:03 clear to me that the movie was not exploitative and that it was original and that it was
05:08 heartbreaking. I think there are some really, really wonderful actors who bring so much
05:13 personality and energy and presence to movies that they can almost make something out of nothing,
05:19 but I'm not one of them. I really need it to be there. When I think of the great opportunities
05:25 I've had, they all start with a really great script and Amber Waves was there. It was very,
05:30 very clear to me who she was. Then when you look at the cast now, my God, all those incredible
05:36 actors and cool people, really, really cool people. It was such a wild experience. It's
05:43 indelible for me, really. My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal, which bothers some men.
05:48 The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina. That was an audition. Joel and Ethan
05:55 Coen want you to come in and read for this. Their language is so fantastic and so precise.
06:02 Maude Lebowski has lots and lots of really long speeches. I can remember working on the audition
06:07 really hard and I had this idea about this kind of voice that I wanted to do. I asked my father
06:12 about his withdrawal of a million dollars from the foundation account and he told me about this
06:16 abduction. But I tell you, it is preposterous. This compulsive fornicator is taking my father
06:21 for the proverbial ride. Jeff Bridges, who I basically couldn't look in the eye because he
06:27 was so funny. I'd have to look at his mouth when he was acting or his chest or something so I
06:32 wouldn't crack up and ruin everything. I could go on and on about Jeff. He's just a genius. Also,
06:37 maybe one of the loveliest people I've ever worked with. He's just so, so lovely and so
06:42 patient. There was one day when he was doing a speech and at the same point in every take,
06:47 a plane would circle. It went on 14 times. 14 times he had to do that monologue and he never
06:54 got mad. I was like, "There's something else." I love the Big Lebowski's Occult Classic because
07:00 what was funny about it too is that it opened, I saw the movie, and then it tanked. People hated
07:05 the movie. They were like, "Oh, what a failure." But then I noticed as the years went by, I'd walk
07:10 down the street and people would be like, "Big Lebowski, Big Lebowski." And it became evident
07:15 that it was something that was being watched all over the place and suddenly became one of those
07:20 movies that everybody watches and people quote and people dress up as the characters. So I'm so
07:26 thrilled that in my life that I've achieved that, that I've managed to be in a movie that's one of
07:31 those movies that maybe my grandkids will even know about just by its reputation and by its
07:37 celebration. This is Special Agent Clarice Starling, 514-3690, deposing Mason R. Verger
07:43 on March 20th, sworn and attested. I want to tell you about Simon Canthar. Ridley, a masterful
07:48 director, it was an honor working with him. He's so savvy and so quick and he sketches everything
07:54 that he shoots. He's got it all figured out. I was living in New York and they said, "Ridley wants to
08:01 meet you." And I had a little boy at the time. They said, "Could you fly to LA to meet him?"
08:06 But I had to go in and out. So I flew to Los Angeles in a really early flight, met him,
08:11 had a meeting, barely spoke at the meeting because I didn't know what to say,
08:14 and then left and then flew back to New York. Ridley told me later, he said, "I see." Because
08:21 I said to everybody, "She's awfully quiet." And he said, "No, I'm not quiet. I just didn't know
08:26 what to say. What are you supposed to say?" Of course, I felt pressure. Jodie Foster is
08:31 absolutely iconic and is one of my favorite performers ever. I think the most important
08:36 thing was not to try to... I'm like, "I'm not going to be Jodie. There's no way. And I'm not
08:41 in that movie. I'm in this movie." And I think that was something that Ridley made very clear.
08:45 There are no comparisons. I think Ridley made me feel pretty secure and you can only do what
08:49 you can do. Anthony Hopkins is a brilliant actor, absolutely brilliant, who has a tremendous sense
08:55 of play. I remember we were doing this scene after the brain eating scene happens. And we're
08:59 in the kitchen and he's leaning over me and he looks like he's going to stab me and he's
09:03 threatening me. And he leaned in and he goes, "Isn't this fun?" Baking the cake
09:07 to show him that we love him. Otherwise he won't know we love him.
09:11 That's right. I never think about how films compare to things that I've done prior. The
09:21 most interesting thing about being a gig worker, which is what we are, is almost like the job,
09:26 you've discarded the job behind you because you're moving on to the next one. So you're
09:29 just kind of thinking like, "What's ahead of me? What's ahead of me?" This was a book
09:33 that I greatly admired by Michael Cunningham. And I remember reading the book and thinking like,
09:37 "God, I'd do anything to be in this. If they ever make a movie of this, I would do anything."
09:42 Then, of course, the movie was announced and I knew that I was being considered for it. And boy,
09:48 did I want it. I mean, I really, really wanted it. It was all I could think about. And also the fact
09:54 that that was the part that I identified with when I read the book. I think because at that point,
09:58 I did have this little boy and it was all between a mother and her small son. It was something that
10:02 I kind of understood. It's one of those things where you really are trying very hard to get
10:07 something and you're really wishing that you'd get it. And then when it happened, it was just,
10:11 it was incredible. What a lovely movie, such sensitivity, such beauty. I think it's one of
10:18 the most successful adaptations of a novel that I've ever seen. The clarity to it and emotion and
10:25 absolutely staggering. Why am I here, Joyce? I need your help. I need transit papers. Not for
10:31 me, a girl. She's a Fuji. I need to get her to the coast to pass security checkpoints.
10:36 I love the script. I loved Alfonso Cuaron. He was living in my neighborhood, actually,
10:40 at the time he was in New York and said that he wanted to talk to me about something. So he
10:44 actually spoke to me about the project before I read it. And he was like, there's something that
10:48 I want you to do. And it's, you know, it's very special and it's not going to take a lot of time.
10:52 And he kind of described it. And he's such an extraordinary filmmaker. I loved what he created
10:58 with me and Clive. It's really a lesson in storytelling. And that amazing shot with the
11:04 camera that moved around the car that got us all, where we all participated by kind of moving our
11:09 bodies and ducking and turning. It was all one take. The camera starts outside, moves inside
11:16 the car, kind of moves around all of us and then suddenly goes outside again. And then,
11:23 you know, and then there's like all this burning. I mean, it's a really famous shot. And I think
11:28 what was special about it was that we were active participants in the mechanics of it.
11:31 I'm so much older than I thought I'd be. There's a turnoff valve for the sprinklers over there.
11:37 Last week, you know, when I told you that I had to work late, I really went to see the
11:40 new Twilight movie by myself. I don't know why I did that. But it was so bad.
11:47 I'm always actively looking to do a comedy, frankly. I love comedies and I love being in them.
11:54 And this was a screenplay that was so fantastic. It's so, so incredibly, like, human and real and
12:03 multi-generational. And starring the great Steve Carell, you know, who I absolutely adore. And
12:10 Emma Stone, who was amazing. And Ryan Gosling and Kevin Bacon. What a crazy cast, right?
12:17 It was so much fun to do that I forgot how much I cried in it when I finally saw it. Because all
12:21 I remember doing is laughing because we laughed really hard. I really enjoyed myself on it. Then
12:25 when I saw the movie, I'm like, oh, I forgot. I'm the one who's always crying because my marriage
12:30 fell apart. I'm like, oh, God. Is this a bad time? Yeah. Jacob! You know how much pain and suffering
12:38 you cause my friend? You dumb son of a bitch. Stay the hell away from my daughter! You! Stay
12:42 away from my daughter! I don't even know you! That fight scene was great because of the level
12:47 of talent and the complication, I think, in the scene. The fact that we were all in it at the
12:51 same time. You know, it was one of those things that's really elaborate in terms of the choreography.
12:56 And the editing, I think, is wonderful because as people come in and things start to accelerate,
13:01 you watch it go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then there's that really, you know,
13:04 nutty, nutty fight. My daughter loves now because she's, of course, a young woman. She's 21. I'm
13:11 blindfolded the whole time. And then when I take my blindfold off, the first thing I say,
13:15 and it was an ad lib, when I see Ryan Gosling to Emma Stone is, oh, honey, he's so cute.
13:19 And she just loves it because that's how I, you know, if she has a boyfriend or something,
13:26 I'm always like, that's, he's a cute one. I love working with Ricardo and Requa.
13:29 I love working with all the actors. And it's one of those movies that people always reference.
13:34 They're like, oh, I love that movie. I watch that every year. And it's just a,
13:38 I think it's just a movie about loving people and making mistakes and finding your way back
13:43 and things not being perfect and not being what you expected. I love that one.
13:48 Did you get the numbers? The what?
13:50 My approval rating in Alaska. They're not in yet.
13:55 I am trying to trust you people, but you're making it really hard for me.
13:59 I'm sorry, Governor. I'll call Steve right away about it.
14:04 I'm not like that. I'll do anything.
14:05 Game change was what may be one of the more difficult undertakings of my entire career.
14:10 Honestly, I spoke to Jay Roach about it and said yes before I really gave it enough thought,
14:16 you know? And then when I got home and I really considered what it was going to take, I was like,
14:22 oh, this is going to be bad. I had two months to prepare. And this is the first time in my life
14:26 that I stopped doing anything, anything at all except preparing. I did all the mom stuff,
14:31 but I didn't meet friends. I didn't go to the movies. I didn't go to plays. I wiped my social
14:36 calendar. And all I did was work with my dialect coach and watch footage of Sarah Palin. And I even
14:42 took, I would pick up my kids from school in the car and I took everything off my playlist except
14:49 for Sarah Palin's voice. So that's all they heard when we drove from place to place with Sarah
14:56 Palin talking like that for two solid months. They're like, "You don't even have any music,
15:00 mom. You just have this lady's voice." Because I knew if I got it wrong, like the minute when
15:06 you're playing someone who's that iconic, who's that present in popular, in public life, right?
15:11 If you get the tone wrong, then they're like, "I can't watch this. This isn't her." So it felt
15:17 really urgent that I get it right. Why won't you take me seriously? No, I know what I'm feeling. I
15:24 know what it's feeling. And it feels like my brain is fucking dying and everything I've worked for
15:30 in my entire life is going. It's all gone. All gone. Wash and Rich had sent me another script
15:37 previously. Came very close to doing it and ultimately decided that I wasn't going to do it.
15:42 And then really shortly after that, they were like, "Can we send you something else though?"
15:45 They sent me the script and I couldn't stop crying. I was really surprised by its immediacy.
15:50 I didn't expect to be so compelled by this. I emailed them right away. "Yes, I'm going to do
15:55 this. But you guys have a whole movie to make, so I doubt you're going to get to it." They said,
15:58 "No, we're going to get to it. We're definitely going to get to it next." When we finally did do
16:02 it, the one prerequisite I had, I was working on The Hunger Games. It's like I had a whole year of
16:08 The Hunger Games. And they were like, "We have to squeeze it in before that." And I said, "There's
16:12 no way because I don't have time to do the prep." They were like, "Well, no, you have a month in
16:16 November." I said, "I have no time to do the prep." We had to go to Hunger Games and say,
16:19 "Is there any way we could make this work out?" They gave me the month of February off. I went
16:24 back to Wash and Rich and I said, "We can do it if we shoot it in February. Just those days. That's
16:28 it." And then I could start my prep in November when I had a little bit of a space. And so it was
16:33 the same thing. I just did this really rigorous prep all the way up to it. Did some stuff in Hunger
16:38 Games and then when it got to be February, went straight into that. This project had to be deeply,
16:42 deeply observed because I knew nothing about this disease and I knew no one with it. I'm
16:47 really fortunate that I haven't had that in my family. I was really meticulous and I said to
16:52 them too, I said, "I don't want to do anything on screen that I haven't seen personally." I said,
16:56 "Because behavior is really important. It's important to the people who are dealing with
17:00 this disease, with the families of people who are dealing with it." So I think it was another
17:05 opportunity to really learn how much observation matters and how much information matters and
17:12 immersion in a subject. And I also had some people who were advising me who were in early stages of
17:18 Alzheimer's disease who would be there and I'd ask them questions like, "What do you feel like?
17:23 What do you do?" And it gave me so much, so much clarity. I heard you saw Tom. Yes, for coffee.
17:33 How was he? He's handsome. Oh yes, he's very handsome.
17:38 I could see how being in a relationship with him in a marriage would be isolating.
17:44 Precisely. Natalie's the best. I love Natalie. I knew her a little bit socially just from like
17:54 around, from around LA. And once we were at a Stevie Wonder concert together, I wrote her an
17:59 email after Black Swan just saying how impressed I was by that beautiful performance. But I didn't
18:03 know her. I didn't know how she worked. Of course, you have some trepidation when you're working very
18:07 intimately with someone that you haven't met. And I met her and I was like, "She's amazing.
18:13 She's so accessible. She's so available. She's really, really smart. She's very practical about
18:18 her work. She's very similar to me in that she's very, very committed to her work, but she doesn't
18:22 carry it around with her." Like once it's over, we could relax and talk and enjoy each other's
18:26 company. Everything Natalie and I created, we created together. And we could push each other
18:31 and just go a little bit further every time. The script was so beautiful and so loaded and so
18:37 muscular. So the things that people say are deceptively simple, but they are weaponized.
18:44 And I think that's what Natalie and I think because of our, the intimate nature of our
18:49 scenes and our connection, we're really able to come together in a great way.
18:53 [Crying]
18:57 Where were you?
18:58 I took a walk. Showed Elizabeth the neighborhood.
19:03 Elizabeth.
19:05 She's getting on my last nerve.
19:12 The script initially for May/December went to Natalie and Natalie was a person who's
19:17 under Todd Haynes, who I've made many, many movies with. And Todd right away thought of me for Gracie
19:24 and said, he wrote me an email saying, "I'm going to slip you a script," because he didn't want to
19:27 tell Natalie that I might be interested unless he knew that I was going to be interested in the
19:31 script. And I was so excited to get an email like that from him. I was like, "Wow, yes, yes, I am in."
19:38 I mean, first of all, to find a movie with two really complicated, compelling female characters
19:44 who are in kind of a power struggle or certainly a struggle for whose truth, whose story is going to
19:50 win. And Gracie's story, she's concocted this narrative, you know, about, of true love. You
19:56 know, she's someone who had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old. And I think in order to kind
20:02 of propel this narrative forward, she thinks it is a great love story. In that sense, he has to be
20:06 the man at 13 and she is the child. And she remains the child, sort of elevates him to manhood. But
20:14 her view of life is that of someone who is hyper-feminine, very childlike, very naive,
20:20 is fragile and dependent. And it's a very difficult narrative, I think, to give support to.
20:26 And so she's always looking for affirmation from the outside. She looks for that for Elizabeth.
20:31 And then you also see how emotionally volatile she is because of the space between what happened
20:37 and the story that she's telling. Being like a kind of a gig system, you're always looking
20:43 forward. You're always thinking, what's next? It's almost like eating candy. When you're eating
20:47 candy, you're like, oh man, I love this candy. And then you're done with it and you don't think
20:53 about the candy you ate. You're just like, when can I get some more candy?
20:58 [Music]