Julianne Moore Was Told by Industry Member to ‘Look Prettier’ for Roles: ‘I Don’t Know If I Can’
Academy Award winner Julianne Moore was once told to be more beautiful as a celebrity.
The “When You Finish Saving the World” actress revealed that she was encouraged to “look prettier” in Hollywood and grappled with her naturally red hair earlier in her career.
“Someone in the film industry said to me, ‘You should try to look prettier.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can,'” Moore told The Times UK. “Obviously, ours is a business where there is some physicality involved, but beauty and prettiness are subjective.”
She continued, “My red hair made me feel like an outsider growing up. Redheads are two percent of the global population. Nobody wants to feel like they’re in the minority, particularly as a young child. Now, I feel very identified with my hair and freckles, but there’s still a part of me that would rather be a tanned blonde.”
Moore deemed the phrase “aging gracefully” to be “totally sexist” in June 2021 regarding older female stars.
“Is there an ungraceful way to age? We don’t have an option of course,” Moore said. “No one has an option about aging, so it’s not a positive or a negative thing, it just is.”
Moore recently wrapped a film that nods to the cyclical power of women aging, opposite Natalie Portman and Charles Melton in Todd Haynes’ “May December.” Per the official synopsis, 20 years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yu and her husband Joe (23 years her junior) brace themselves for their twins to graduate high school. When Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry comes to spend time with the family to better understand Gracie, who she will be playing in a film, family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Joe, never having processed what happened in his youth, starts to confront the reality of life as an empty nester at 36. Moore previously worked with Todd Haynes on the films “Safe,” “Far from Heaven,” and “Wonderstruck.”
“When You Finish Saving the World” is directed by Jesse Eisenberg, co-stars Finn Wolfhard, and releases from A24 on January 20.
