Demi Moore has said that before she got the script for “The Substance,” she thought that maybe her days in the movies were done.
I was just about certain they’d passed.
Her commercial stride came about three decades ago, in her late 20s and early 30s, when she was a dewy object of immortal longing in “Ghost,” an exotic dancer in “Striptease,” a one-night stand worth $1 million in “Indecent Proposal.” Hollywood treated Moore as more specimen than thespian. And specimens don’t last.
But on Sunday night, at 62, she won a Golden Globe for best actress in a movie (comedy or musical) for “The Substance,” presaging her outstanding female actor nomination from the Screen Actors Guild on Wednesday morning and giving her strong odds for a first-ever Oscar nomination next week. The moment had perfect poetry, because “The Substance” casts her as an aging star crudely sidelined for younger models. And because age, not youth, distinguished most of the other female actors taking home Globes.
Best actress in a movie drama went to Fernanda Torres, for “I’m Still Here.” She’s 59. Best supporting actress in a movie of any kind went to Zoe Saldaña, for “Emilia Pérez,” who, at 46, has ditched the blue hue of her sci-fi-hottie “Avatar” roles and ascended to a much higher zenith of regard.
The Globes honor work in television, too, and the best actress in a comedy series was Jean Smart, for “Hacks.” She’s 73. The winner for best actress in a limited series was Jodie Foster, for “True Detective: Night Country.” She’s 62.
I’m not prepared to declare a new day for older women in show business. But I do want to take the occasion of this awards season to celebrate a rare bevy of rich roles for veteran actresses and to articulate the wish that it’s less anomaly than turning point.
Rich roles for a diversity of performers, too. Torres and Saldaña are Latina. The women competing with Moore in her Globes category included Zendaya, who is Black, for “Challengers”; Cynthia Erivo, who is Black and identifies as queer, for “Wicked”; and Karla Sofía Gascón, who is transgender, for “Emilia Pérez.” Erivo and Gascón also joined Moore among the just-announced SAG nominees.
Whether the subject and setting are Hollywood or Washington, the entertainment industry or politics, we talk, as we must, about how far we still need to travel to reach a place of real inclusion, robust opportunity and full respect for all. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t made advances, and the Globes, for all their trademark silliness, were serious proof of that. Presenters, nominees, winners — they represented many kinds of women. Sure, their average weight was probably below the American norm and their average yearly bill for cosmetic interventions probably higher. Injectables aren’t on the way out.
But perhaps seasoning, experience and wisdom are in. The youngest of the six nominees in Torres’s category were Kate Winslet, for “Lee,” and Angelina Jolie, for “Maria,” both, at 49, in movies whose titles reflect their unswerving focus on uncommon women.
And perhaps we’re becoming just an iota less hasty to stereotype women and consign them to suffocating boxes. (I’m beginning 2025 on a note of willed optimism.) Pamela Anderson, who rose to fame in a bathing suit on the television series “Baywatch,” was among the Golden Globe nominees for best actress in a movie drama for “The Last Showgirl,” about a dancer whose currency has been cruelly devalued by age, and she joined Moore, Erivo and Gascón among the SAG nominees for outstanding female actor. Like Moore, Anderson had never previously received such critical acclaim. She’s 57 — and has lately been forgoing makeup in public appearances as a way of freeing herself from other people’s expectations.
I’d say that she and Moore are digging deeper than ever, but really they’d been denied the shovels. “The Substance” is a complicated one: joyless, tendentious, gratuitously bloody. But there’s no looking away from Moore’s raw, fierce, dazzling performance. It’s an unfettered scream of undiluted rage at a world that too often judges women superficially, treats them contemptuously and throws them away.
The awards-season response to it suggests that Hollywood sees the truth in that indictment and feels some measure of appropriate guilt. Does contrition augur amends? Here’s hoping that the aggregate talent of Moore and the other female actors on the awards circuit will persuade moviemakers of how rewarding that would be.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Washington Post, Candace Buckner described the derision that Ace Flagg — the fraternal twin of the basketball sensation Cooper Flagg — faced when his high school basketball team played a recent road game. “The atmosphere is a cocoon of squeals and cheers, choreographed taunts and random insults, and it features the most savage combination in the free world: hormones and unlimited lung capacity,” she wrote. “And most of this symphony in the key of puberty is directed at Ace Flagg.” (Thanks to Paul Wester of Beltsville, Md., for nominating this.)
Also in The Post, Carolyn Hax counseled a reader not to be so censorious of a person’s decision to purchase a purebred dog: “Judging is carbs for the ego — so tasty and hard to resist and havoc when overdone.” (Laurie Kasparian, Mission Viejo, Calif.)
And Ron Charles previewed “The Little Book of Bitcoin,” to be published later this month, by the hyperbolic, hyperactive, supremely self-confident pitchman Anthony Scaramucci: “This book couldn’t be any more Eau de Mooch if it were a jar of the man’s sweat.” Charles also observed: “But who can argue with the Mooch’s ebullience? In one passage, he touts the convenience of transporting $500 million in Bitcoin on a thumb drive, which is the best news I’ve heard since my yacht got a new helipad.” (Stephen S. Power, Maplewood, N.J., and Hannah Reich, Queens, among others)
In People magazine, Tim Gliatto remembered Maria Callas: “She had both an electric stage presence and an unforgettable voice that, while not technically beautiful, projected a fierce, scalding intensity. You could sear a steak with that voice.” (Elizabeth Bradburn, San Francisco)
In The Philadelphia Inquirer, Margaret Eby made the case for cabernet in a can: “You can get fairly nice wine in a convenient single-serve packaging, allowing for picnicking and gesturing wildly without spilling.” (Elliot Brown, Manhattan)
In The Dispatch, Kevin D. Williamson played Trump historian and national psychiatrist: “It is worth keeping in mind that many Americans loved Donald Trump and enjoyed his bullying and corruption and performative libertinism long before he was an active politician. We’re a country with a Mack truck for an id and a Prius for a superego.” (Michael Smith, Georgetown, Ky.)
In The Times, Dan Barry and Alan Feuer marked the anniversary of the storming of the Capitol: “The Jan. 6 tale that Mr. Trump tells is its own kind of replacement theory, one that covers over the marble-hard facts the way a blue carpet will cover those tainted Capitol steps on Inauguration Day.” (Ann Madonia Casey, Fairview, Texas)
Also in The Times, Michelle Cottle updated Kari Lake’s résumé: “Mr. Trump has tapped her to be the new head of Voice of America. But after her failed races for governor in 2022 and the Senate in 2024, it’s clear Ms. Lake isn’t even the voice of Arizona.” (Marty Regan, Chicago)
David French pondered the cruelty of many Christians: “Give a man a sword and tell him he’s defending the cross, and there’s no end to the damage he can do.” (Judith McCaffrey, Salem, Ore.)
And Peter Catapano praised the 2024 book “Mysticism” by Simon Critchley: “He is the rare philosopher who doesn’t flinch at religious experience. And this book does something miraculous: It saves the baby of mysticism from the discarded bathwater of institutional religion.” (Sarah Leggat, Cohasset, Mass.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Reading, Watching and Doing
On the last day of 2024, Regan and I ran into a veterinarian who’d cared for her when she and I lived in New York. He cooed anew over her beauty and sweet disposition, then noticed her limp. He wasn’t surprised. Some three years ago, he remarked on an asymmetry in her gait that foretold trouble as she aged. She’s less than a month shy of 11 now.
“Knee tear?” he asked me.
Yup.
“Surgery?”
Six weeks earlier.
“That was inevitable,” he said. He added that she seemed to be making a good recovery. But he cautioned me: She’d probably never again be the deer-chasing, creek-crossing, hill-climbing whirligig of the past, and I’d be wisest and kindest not to encourage such intense exertion. It was time for her to slow down, at least somewhat. It was best.
In my 2022 book “The Beauty of Dusk” — about a rare type of stroke I suffered, its effect on my eyesight and what I learned about coping and resilience — I recalled how a college psychology professor of mine liked to say that life was about dealing with loss. I questioned his specific wording, his exact formulation. I think life is about recognizing that loss needn’t be regarded that way and that there’s a complicated arithmetic at work. Loss is change. Loss is challenge, the meeting and mastering of which has its own dividends. With some losses, there are gains. And with many losses, something essential — maybe the most important thing of all — remains.
Lost to me and Regan are the challenging mountain hikes that we did on those special days when we were in the right place with the right amount of time. Lost to us are rambling, two-hour explorations of the trails near our Chapel Hill, N.C., home.
But our shorter, gentler strolls around the neighborhood in the morning, when the birds get mouthy, and in the early evening, when the sun quits, allow us to do precisely what those grander adventures did: share space and share pleasures in a world brimming with both. We move through it with less physical grace. But we move through it together, and that’s what counts.
