Demi Moore won the Golden Globe for best actress in January for her performance in the horror sci-fi film, The Substance. In her acceptance speech, she shared that, 30 years ago, a producer told her she was a “popcorn actress”. The implication was that she was not the kind of “serious” actor who might win awards.
Having now also received an Oscar nomination for the role, it seems her work is finally being taken seriously. During the 1980s and 1990s, Moore was a huge star and renowned for appearing in mainstream, big budget films – hence the “popcorn” label. If you go back to the films she is best known for, however, an interesting trend emerges.
As a researcher of gender in film and television, I’ve long been interested in Moore’s work. That’s because, while it is perhaps most explicit in The Substance, the majority of her oeuvre interrogates womanhood and power.
