Demi Moore celebrated her 62nd birthday by eating spicy wings and reflecting on Ghost. On Friday, the actress visited Hot Ones and went through every wing without flinching as she looked back at some of her most famous roles. Right away, host Sean Evans asked about her 1990 hit co-starring Patrick Swayze, and her remarkable skill at crying onscreen.
“Ghost scared the crap out of me,” she told Evans. “To be such a young person dealing with the loss of your partner… In reading the script, I was so overwhelmed at the kind of grief that I was going to have to tap into.”
The actress reminisced about her acting as Molly Jensen in the film, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. “I know that there’s this iconic thing about the [crying out of] one eye. I didn’t plan that, I had no control over that. That’s just how it happened,” she said. “That one kind of helped me get over a hurdle of my own… Emotionally, whenever we have to be vulnerable, it is not easy.”
Moore shared that, like Ghost, the script for her latest film, The Substance, also carried a special sense of danger she found irresistible. “It was holding something that was worth the risk, and I felt that way about Ghost, because it had so many genres mixed together,” she said. “Truly, I thought this could be amazing or a fucking disaster. Either way, it’s the kind of juice that says, ‘Step in.’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Moore reflected on the “loss of the cinema experience,” and why she thinks sharing experiences at the theater is so important.
“What’s been interesting to see with The Substance is that it’s pulled people into the theater, and I think the risk, not just in cinema but in life, is that we’re moving toward too much isolation,” said Moore, whose next film will be with the provocative writer-director Boots Riley. “Our communal experience allows us to connect to one another… While I truly love streaming and appreciate it, and think there’s an aspect that’s quite additive for all of us, I hope we can find a middle ground with bringing us back to the theater to not lose that.”