How Demi Moore bounced back from traumatic marriage ‘threesomes’ and drug ordeals that ‘nearly burned hole’ through face
DURING Demi Moore’s emotional Golden Globes acceptance speech, she spoke of having been at a “low point” and not thinking she was “enough”.
It is no surprise considering the actress, 62, has battled countless traumas and rejections during her life – including her biological dad leaving before she was born, saving her drug addicted mum from suicide, two spells in rehab and being raped aged 15.
The star of Ghost, Indecent Proposal and A Few Good Men’s return to form in the satirical horror movie The Substance is one of the greatest Hollywood comebacks of all time.
Having struggled to land a hit movie over the past couple of decades, Demi thought “this was it.”
And when you learn of what the mother-of-three has been through, you’ll know why her best actress win at the Globes on Sunday meant so much.
In her speech, which has gone viral, Demi said: “In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough, or pretty enough, or skinny enough, or are basically just not enough, I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know you will never be enough but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.'”
Demi was born in Roswell, New Mexico in the United States to a chaotic and unstable family.
Her air force father Charles Harmon Sr split from her mum Virginia after a two-month marriage before Demi came into the world.
Instead she thought that advertising salesman Dan Guynes, who married her mum when she was three months old, was her dad.
At the age of 13 she started to suspect she had another father and her mum only admitted the truth after a confrontation.
“I was never supposed to know Charles existed,” she said.
Demi and her step brother Morgan, 57, moved 30 times before they were in their teens, with bailiffs chasing their parents for debts.
The wild, unconventional upbringing came with risks.
In a recent interview with Drew Barrymore, Demi recalled: “Both of our parents let us take the car without drivers’ licences at 13.
“Driving on the freeway, my parents would say ‘okay here’s the deal you can take the car. If you get stopped, you just have to say you took the car without permission.’
“And they saw that as a win-win for everybody, but that is lunacy.”
Both Dan and Virginia battled alcoholism and suicidal thoughts.
Our parents let us take the car without drivers’ licences at 13
Demi Moore
Demi had to pull the sleeping pills from her mum’s mouth after Virginia attempted to end her life and tragically Dan killed himself in 1980.
In her autobiography Inside Out, published six years ago, she revealed how she was raped aged 15 by a man.
Demi believes that her mum had been paid £400 by the attacker to spend time with her.
The actress, though, doubted she’d been pimped out, commenting: “I don’t think it was a straightforward transaction but she still did give him the access and put me in harm’s way.”
Drug & booze-fuelled rise
Demi found her escape in the bright lights of Los Angeles, signing for a top model agency aged 16 and working as a receptionist at a movie studio.
A whirlwind romance with rock musician Freddy Moore led to a four-year marriage, which ended in 1985 – the year her career took off with the Brat Pack movie St Elmo’s Fire.
She became engaged to co-star Emilio Estevez, but the romance ended when he was caught up in another woman’s paternity claim.
And with the fame came drinking and drug-taking.
I nearly burned a hole through my nostrils
Demi Moore
Demi once admitted to snorting so much cocaine that “I nearly burned a hole through my nostrils”.
She said her reputation was so bad that during filming of St Elmo’s Fire “they paid to have a sober companion with me 24/7, during the whole shooting”.
But she went to rehab and managed to stay clean for the next 20 years.
It led to the most successful part of her career.
‘Popcorn’ actress
Demi was so in demand in the 1990s that she negotiated a record £10million sum to star in Striptease in 1996.
But, as she revealed in Sunday’s speech: “30 years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress.”
That put-down “corroded” her confidence, which was further dented by a series of box office flops.
Her marriage to Bruce Willis, which lasted from 1987 to 2000 and produced three daughters, Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30, is also said to have set back her career.
Demi claimed that Bruce wanted her to put the family before work, which caused problems.
But in 1991 Bruce said: “It’s certainly not a storybook marriage. We have problems. We argue, but we both understand marriage takes care and nurturing.”
Her affection for her ex-husband has been demonstrated in the support she’s shown for him since the Die Hard actor was diagnosed with an incurable form of dementia a couple of years ago.
Threesomes
The marriage ended amicably, so much so that Bruce would go on holidays with Demi and her third husband Ashton Kutcher, who was 15 years her junior.
Alleged infidelity seems to have been the ultimate cause of her union with That 70s Show actor Ashton ending in 2011.
In her autobiography Demi claimed that not only did her husband cheat on her, he asked for them to have threesomes with another woman.
She said: “Because we had brought a third party into our relationship, Ashton said, that blurred the lines and, to some extent, justified what he’d done.”
We had brought a third party into our relationship
Demi Moore
Ashton said in a tweet, though, that Demi’s version of events was not the “truth”.
Whatever the cause of the break-up, it was followed by a downward spiral for the actress.
In January 2012 an ambulance was called for Demi after she suffered convulsions, with a woman saying that the actress had “smoked something.”
The substance was described as “similar to incense” which is a name sometimes used for the drug Spice.
Demi checked into rehab again and admitted in an interview “part of my life was clearly unravelling.”
But she did not admit to taking the synthetic drug.
Back to her best
Since then she has gradually got her life back on track, rebuilding her acting career, appearing in the hit TV drama Empire in 2015 and playing Ann Woodward in the critically-acclaimed series Feud last year.
It was the chance to play a washed-up celebrity in The Substance that put her back in the spotlight.
Demi, who is currently single, said in her Globes acceptance speech: “I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance.
“And the universe told me, ‘You’re not done.’”