Demi Moore

Demi Moore was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1962, worked as a model, and joined General Hospital in 1981. She left the soap in 1983 and landed in the Brat Pack, doing Blame It on Rio, St. Elmo's Fire and About Last Night inside three years. Ghost made her a star in 1990, and by 1995 she was the highest-paid actress in the world, a fact reported at the time as though it were a scandal rather than a salary.

The parts she was best in are the ones where she is the most disciplined person in a room full of men. The navy lawyer in A Few Good Men who does the unglamorous procedural work while two other actors shout. The executive in Disclosure. Lieutenant Jordan O'Neil in G.I. Jane, a role built almost entirely out of physical endurance. Moore played competence, and the films around her usually could not decide whether to admire it or punish it.

She was paid a then unheard-of 12.5 million dollars for Striptease in 1996, and the run that followed, The Scarlet Letter, The Juror and G.I. Jane, fell below expectations. Her output dropped sharply. What came next were occasional leads in smaller films and sharp supporting turns in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Bobby and Margin Call.

Then The Substance in 2024, a body-horror film about an actress discarded for ageing, played by an actress the industry had treated exactly that way. It put her back at the centre of things. Her accolades include a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award, plus Academy Award, BAFTA and Emmy nominations, and in 2025 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a place on Time's hundred most influential list.