10 Things You Want To Know About Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore at the 2009 London Film Festival. Image courtesy of the festival.

This weekend in London, Julianne Moore sat down for an inspired chat in front of a few hundred folks at the London Film Festival.  There promoting both Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” and Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe,” Moore and moderator Briony Hanson (of London’s The Script Factory) talked about everything from those films to her previous work to her thoughts about aging to her tendency to work with queer filmmakers. So, in the vein of a piece indieWIRE ran a few months back on another (often) redheaded queer icon, we’ve decided to pick out some highlights from the talk in listed form.  Here, in no particular order, are ten of the many facts that we learned about Ms. Moore in London:

1. Her character in “A Single Man” was inspired by Tom Ford’s grandmother.

“He had a very glamorous grandmother,” Moore said of Ford. “She lived in Santa Fe. When I went for my first costume fitting, he was very specific about the dress. He pulled out quite a few options, but when he whipped out this one dress, and I put it on, he was like, “That’s the dress.” And the dress had come from a vintage store in Santa Fe, where his grandmother lived. So he got very emotional and said he could not believe the dress I was going to wear was from there. But, yeah, she had the hair and the makeup and the jewelry, and was it fun… So that’s where a lot of that came from.”

2. She admits to many failed projects, but stands firmly behind Fernando Meirelles’ “Blindness.”

“‘Blindness’ is a movie that people just hammered to death,” Moore said quite passionately. “I feel like, it came out in the United States the day after the Lehman Brothers collapse. No one wanted to see a movie about the end of the world. And at Cannes, they had the screening for the journalists at 8 o’clock in the morning on the day they arrived. And everyone wanted to see ‘Kung Fu Panda.’ I’m not kidding. So people were pissed! They didn’t want to see that. This movie is challenging. It’s a very impressionistic take. Fernando Meirelles wanted to give the audience the sensation of being blind. There are some beautiful things he did with it. So, yes, I stand by that movie absolutely.”

3. Todd Haynes refused to look at her pregnant belly while they shot “Far From Heaven.”

“I had to tell Todd I was pregnant just before we started shooting” she said. “He was great about it, but the one thing he would do as I got bigger and bigger was that he’d never look down. I’d show up on the set and he’d be like [she looks up and imitates his rather droll voice], ‘hi, how are you!? You look great… You look wonderful today.’ He wouldn’t ever look down.”

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Julianne Moore in Tom Ford’s “A Single Man.” Image courtesy of The Weinstein Company. 4. Haynes and her never really talk. “At my audition for ‘Safe,’ I was like ‘okay, I’m going to read the first scene,” she explained. “And he was like [in another Todd Haynes voice imitation] ‘okay.’ And I finished it, and he went ‘okay.’ And then I said I was doing the second scene and he said ‘okay.’ And I said ‘okay.’ So I read it and he said ‘okay… bye.’ And that’s what we continue to do. Even on ‘Far From Heaven,’ we had a read through early on and I said to him, ‘okay, listen, I feel like I can hear something in my head and I want to make sure I’m on the right track, so before we talk about anything, let’s just see if it’s alright.’ So I did it and he was like ‘yeah, that’s right.’ That was it. So, yeah, we don’t really talk a whole lot.” 5. She does not believe there is a downside to awards attention. “Noooo,” she yelped when moderator Briony Hanson asked if getting awards attention had a downside. “Are you kidding? It helps you get another job! Bring it on! You’re like, ‘thank you.’ It’s great.” -this article continues on the next page- Page 1 of 2 Next Login to recommend this article » posted on October 27, 2009 Films to Snag Comments 1 pegu says on October 28, 2009 at 8:19pm Enjoyed Blindess - very provoking, dismal, thoughtful, powerful. Glad she considers it in a positive manner despite the criticism. 2 barry@cavalierfilms.com says on October 28, 2009 at 2:56pm Thank God for actors like Ms Moore.  One can tell she works with a passion and her movie choices are so interesting, challenging, and varied.  As an embattled indie producer, hearing that she did a film out of passion and it cost her money, reminds me importantly that on the artistic end at least, there are those who are in this business out of a deep love for the art.  Bravo.  B Login to Leave a Comment »