Most people would likely agree that Demi Moore has had an amazing career. The 1980s and ‘90s, especially, saw her as one of our reigning cinematic queens, with her acting taking her from the Brat Pack to iconic roles in movies like Ghost, Striptease and Indecent Proposal. The 2024 movie schedule is about to see Moore return to the big screen in one of the upcoming horror movies that people have already been talking about for months, The Substance. Her work there had her reflecting on her infamous bikini scene from Charlie’s Angels 2, though, and the downside to all the chatter about her looks.
What Does Demi Moore Now Say About Her Charlie’s Angels 2 Bikini Scene And All The Talk About Her Looks?
Demi Moore has been a famous actress for many decades now, and she’s never been afraid to push some boundaries to help get a story she believes in on screen. The newly minted fart ambassador is known for a host of intriguing roles in surprising movies, including her villain turn in 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle as Madison Lee.
When talking about her “fucked up body horror masterpiece,” The Substance, with Michelle Yeoh for Interview, Moore revealed that part of the reason she took on her lauded and revealing role in the new film is because of how it tackles the pressure to fit certain beauty standards and being able to ignore those ideals and define both who we are and what we look like. After she added that she was excited about this movie because she was “representing a past ideal and not what my present is,” Yeoh asked if that was what drew her to the story and she replied:
Oh, definitely. What’s interesting is I felt it more when I hit my forties. I had done Charlie’s Angels, and there was a lot of conversation around this scene in a bikini, and it was all very heightened, a lot of talk about how I looked. And then I found that there didn’t seem to be a place for me. I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong. It’s more like I felt that feeling of, I’m not 20, I’m not 30, but I wasn’t yet what they perceived as a mother.
You can be forgiven if you don’t quite remember the Full Throttle scene Moore spoke of, seeing as it’s now been over 20 years since the action movie was released. So, here’s a refresher:
As you can see, the scenes in question don’t play too heavily on how Moore looks or on the fact that she’s in a bikini at all, but it didn’t matter. At the time, she was in her forties and a mother of three, so much of the conversation surrounding the film was about how amazing she looked in that skimpy swimwear.
Though the star had been no stranger to that kind of conversation for other films (like the aforementioned Striptease) in the past, and on the surface it might sound great for everyone to constantly talk about how amazing you look, as Moore noted, there is a downside. For one thing, just because you’re considered one of the major good-looking people of our time, it doesn’t mean that you’re not held to the same, frequently impossible to reach/maintain beauty standards, so any perceived negative change in appearance is gonna bring out the trolls.
And, secondly, as the “hot kooky” grandma noted, it meant that she inadvertently confused a lot of people who might have been thinking of approaching her for roles. She was decidedly and officially not “young” anymore by this time, but still had the stereotypical body of a young woman, meaning that (dumb) people just didn’t know what to do with her when it came time for casting.
Her role as Madison led to people saying Moore was having a career renaissance, and the same is being said for her work in The Substance. You can see for yourself when the film opens on September 20.
