From The Hours and Still Alice to The Hunger Games and Boogie Nights, Julianne Moore’s career has spanned blockbusters and romantic comedies, period dramas, low-budget horror and indie cult classics. She inhabits each role with empathy and meticulous attention to detail, and her latest, Gracie in Todd Haynes’s seductive, slippery May December, is no exception. In her 30s, Gracie scandalised America by having a sexual relationship with Joe, a 13-year-old boy. She’s served her time in jail, married Joe and raised three children when Natalie Portman as Elizabeth, a Hollywood celebrity, arrives to rake up the past in preparation to play Gracie in a movie.
What drew you to the role of Gracie?
Generally, when you find two women opposite each other in a script, they’re either in a love affair or it’s a familial relationship – very rarely do you see something where they’re equally matched, in a struggle for narrative dominance. Gracie has the story that she’s telling and she has the reality of having committed this enormous transgression, and in between there’s this unbelievable fragility and emotional volatility and shame.
