by Demi Moore
AA also helped me understand more about my parents. One of the program’s many catchphrases is “doing a geographic,” meaning when people like my mom and dad pick up and move instead of dealing with their shit head-on—not realizing, of course, that they are always taking their shit with them. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten” is another AA slogan that struck home with me, because it perfectly encapsulated my parents’ approach to life, and the inevitably disappointing outcomes they ended up with, over and over again.
St. Elmo’s Fire got passable reviews. The New York Times called it “as good a film as any to put into a time capsule this year to show what and whom young viewers want.” It did all right at the box office, too. Ultimately, it became a kind of classic of the era, a quintessential coming-of-age movie, and it definitely gave my career a massive boost.
But for me personally, St. Elmo’s will always be the movie that changed my life. If I hadn’t gone to rehab to make that film, I really wonder if I’d still be alive. And while I didn’t really think, Holy shit! I’m in a hit! at the time, I did have a tingly feeling that something had struck.
Chapter 10
Emilio and I started dating seriously after I got sober. We were together for six months, and then we got engaged, and I moved in with him in his condo in Malibu. He was very sweet, very attentive, and, looking back, I think a major factor in how quickly we moved was that I was craving a family, and he had a close relationship with his. They lived nearby and, in fact, when I first met Emilio, he was still living at home with his mother, Janet, an artist; his father, Martin Sheen (whose birth name was Ramón Estévez); his little sister, Renée; and his brothers, Ramón Estévez and Charlie Sheen, who’d taken his father’s stage name. All of the members of the Sheen/Estevez family were actors except for Janet, and whereas I’d always thought of acting as a job, they considered it an art form. I hung on to their every word, trying to absorb some of their seriousness and passion.
Martin had reembraced Catholicism after suffering a heart attack at thirty-six, and had subsequently overcome his own alcoholism. That was an inspiration to me. Emilio’s mom, Janet, had a no-nonsense side, and she was the pillar of the family. I particularly liked Charlie, who I saw as extremely bright and quick-witted, but also as an artist who was full of emotion. He showed me some of his poetry, and I remember being struck by the intensity of his feelings. That was the part of Charlie that a lot of people perhaps didn’t see, or maybe still haven’t—a more gentle, fragile, emotional man than the cocky, combative persona he has projected publicly. Look back at his performance in Platoon: that didn’t come out of nowhere.
Emilio and I would often go over to the family house to have dinner or hang out on the weekends. I never really felt fully incorporated into their clan, but I’m sure that had much more to do with me than with them. (I’ve seen his mother since and talked to her, and she had a totally different perspective of me than I would have thought.) I, of course, assumed that I wasn’t good enough for them—not educated or smart or sophisticated enough. I’d never known people with such strong principles, especially Martin. A longtime political activist, he had been arrested for his anti-war stance, at anti-nuclear demonstrations, for supporting Cesar Chavez, and so on. I was fascinated by all of it but rarely joined in the political discussions at their table, feeling I had everything to learn and little to contribute.
Emilio and his family were, in a lot of ways, a good influence on me. He hated cigarettes, so I gave them up. Unfortunately, like a lot of people quitting smoking, I started putting on weight once I didn’t have the crutch of my cigarettes. It became a problem in the summer of 1985, when I got cast in the movie One Crazy Summer, which required me to be in a bathing suit much of the time. We shot on the beach in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod and Nantucket. It was a dream setting for a truly wacky comedy with some very wild comedic actors: John Cusack, Curtis Armstrong, and the legendary William Hickey. I was pretty much the only girl, which was kind of isolating, until I met a quirky, wonderful social worker who was on the set to work with the kids in the movie. Her name was Patsy Rugg, and she became one of the pivotal people in my life.
We got talking the way women do, and when it emerged that I was newly sober, she told me that she had been sober herself for a very long time. She offered to be my sponsor. Her generosity and guidance made all the difference in the world. All of a sudden, I had a support system, someone I could count on. Patsy didn’t have kids, but she certainly was a mother to me.
But I was having serious food issues. I could barely bring myself to look in a mirror during the filming of One Crazy Summer because I hated what I saw and worried about how it would translate on-screen. I was also frightened; I was sure any director would find my shape unacceptable and I’d never get another part.
This was very much on my mind when my new agent, Paula Wagner at CAA, told me I had landed an audition for a romantic comedy called About Last Night. We were still shooting One Crazy Summer; I had a head full of beachy braids when I went in to read for Debbie, the lead, and I had to explain to the director, Ed Zwick, that it wasn’t my usual look. He hadn’t yet cast the male lead, but Ed said he liked me for the part of Debbie, and we had a very good meeting. I was nervous but excited about the prospect of my first major role in a big movie.
The casting process seemed to move at a snail’s pace, and I grew anxious waiting, especially after I learned that he’d hired my old pal Rob Lowe. It seemed like it made more sense to cast me now than ever. But a full month went by. Finally, Ed Zwick called. When I went in to see him at his office in L.A., my worst nightmare came true: he sat down and said, “You are really who I would like to do this film, but you would have to promise me that you would lose weight.” I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live. I felt a combination of sick, pit-of-my-stomach mortification and raw panic. And so began my process of trying to dominate and control my body—and of equating my worth to my weight, my size, my exterior.
In fairness to Ed, I was not leading-lady thin. I’m not tall, and I have a delicate frame, and I had gained weight—whether it was fifteen pounds or twenty, on me, it was a lot. If I’d had better self-esteem, it easily could have been different; I could have simply said, “You know what? You’re right: I gained a little bit of weight, and I can lose that.” And on the outside, of course, that’s exactly how I handled it. I said, “I absolutely see it; I’ll do whatever it takes because I’m totally committed to doing the film.” (And I was totally committed: I knew what it meant to have a big part in a studio film, one I rightly believed could be a hit.) But I did not approach the issue in a rational, healthy way. I was thrown into a tailspin of terror and self-loathing.
I was sober, sure, but all my anxieties just shifted over to food. If I got on a scale, it could ruin my entire day. I have journals upon journals from that period, full of writing about my pain and torture over my body. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and binge-eat and then be covered in crumbs in the morning. I even put a lock on my refrigerator door at one point. It was like food had become a weapon to use in a war against my body, the enemy. I used food as a kind of punishment for everything I believed was wrong and dirty about myself: I imbued it with every bad feeling, all my shame, and then gobbled it up.
With drugs or alcohol or cigarettes, it’s a basic yes or no—either you use them, or you don’t. Yes or no is straightforward. I’m not saying quitting is easy, but in my experience, once the negotiation is off the table, it’s just a no, and then you can deal with the feelings that arise from it. Once I wrapped my head around the idea that partying simply wasn’t an option for me, then it was a different ball game. But with food, you can’t do that. You have to eat. I remember somebody saying, it’s like having a lion that you have to take out for a walk three times a day.
For years, I couldn’t figure out how to eat. It didn’t help that because of my kidney disease, there was damage to my intestines and problems wi
th my metabolism from having taken high levels of steroids as a kid. They saved my life, but they also wreaked total havoc on my digestive system. But the problem wasn’t just physiological: as I have since come to realize, I had never learned how to digest emotionally. I’d never learned how to take something like disappointment or rejection and really break it down, metabolize it, digest it.
If One Crazy Summer put my body on display in a bathing suit, About Last Night upped the ante. Based on the David Mamet play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, About Last Night was, for its time, a daring movie: my character, Debbie, and Rob’s character, Danny, meet at a singles’ bar and have what they think will be a one-night stand; the next morning, Debbie basically flees. Remember: this was way before Sex and the City. The idea that a woman would just want to get laid and then bail without trying to start a relationship was radical. There were a lot of sex scenes, which meant I had to spend a great deal of time naked in front of a room full of men: camera operators, producers, sound guys, and the director who’d told me I was too fat to be in a film.
It’s telling that when Rob and Ed reminisced about the film—which became a huge hit—many years later for the release of the DVD, Rob remembered the two of us being close to hypothermia in a scene shot outdoors in freezing weather and, in another scene, the pain he was in when his leg gave out while he was carrying me. For my part, I just remember the agony I was in displaying my body for the world to see.
Fortunately, the cast was very friendly and supportive, and we all got along well. I’d never worked before with Jim Belushi or with Elizabeth Perkins, who was making her movie debut, but there was a wonderful camaraderie on the set. Rob and I were old friends, and he and Emilio were also close, having grown up together in Malibu, so there were definite boundaries in the sex scenes I had with Rob that made them easier to shoot. But the self-consciousness I felt about my body was almost paralyzing.
About Last Night was released on July 2, 1986, and pulled in over $38 million. It got decent reviews for the most part, and so did I. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Moore is especially impressive. There isn’t a romantic note she isn’t required to play in this movie, and she plays them all flawlessly.” No critics remarked on my horrible body, which should have proven to me that my horrible body was all in my head.
NEXT, I WENT to do my one and only play in New York, The Early Girl, off-Broadway. The part required me to run onstage completely naked, night after night, in front of a live audience. (The play centered on prostitutes at a Nevada brothel.) Clearly something in me was attracting these kinds of roles. I easily could have said no, but on a deeper level I knew that I needed to be pushed out of my comfort zone—that if I was ever going to overcome my body issues, I had to confront them head-on.
The Early Girl was playing at the Circle Rep downtown, and my agents found me an apartment at one of the first Trump apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue. I threw myself a twenty-third birthday party there, and I dared to invite Andy Warhol, whom I’d met one night at Indochine. I was amazed to read years later in The Andy Warhol Diaries that not only had Andy been to see the play, but felt that he had “got Demi Moore to invite me to her wedding.”
Emilio and I had in fact just mailed out the invitations for our wedding when a friend told me she had seen him out with someone else in L.A. He denied it, of course, but I was having a hard time trusting him: during a two-week breakup a few months before, he’d slept with an “ex” girlfriend, lied about it, and then been forced to tell me the truth when he found out she was pregnant. On my one day a week off from the play, I started going up to Boston to see a therapist who’d been recommended to me by my sponsor Patsy.
I remember the therapist saying to me after a few sessions, “Ordinarily I prefer for a patient to come to an understanding on her own. But I don’t have time to let that happen, so I just have to tell you: if you marry him the way things are right now, you’re going to ruin your life.” She suggested Emilio come in for a session. She wanted him to communicate his priorities to me directly, in person. He was resistant, but he finally did make the trip, and when he revealed his priorities in that session—you’ll be shocked to hear—I was pretty low on the list. I postponed the wedding indefinitely.
When the play had finished its run, I went back to California, but soon after I returned, Emilio went to Canada to do a film—Stakeout, with Richard Dreyfuss. I remember trying to reach him and him not answering the phone, and just knowing it meant more than that he was busy working. He didn’t want me to come up there to talk in person, either, and that’s when I thought, You know what? I’m going to stop trying to call him and call a realtor instead.
I found an adorable fifties beach house on the end of a cul-de-sac in Malibu. And then I told Emilio I was moving out. He showed up in no time with a tattoo of a broken heart, trying to get me back. I think he was one of those men, at least in his youth, who found you much more interesting once he’d lost you. But it was too late: once I’m done, I’m done.
We stayed friends, though, and I went with Emilio to the premiere of Stakeout a few months after we broke up. It turned out to be a highly consequential night in my life, because at that premiere, I met an actor who was very hot at the time, on a hit series called Moonlighting. His name was Bruce Willis.
Chapter 11
He’s all over you, like a cheap suit in the rain,” Emilio said, of the cocky, dark, and handsome guy who’d been introduced to me as Bruce Willis. Actually, I’d thought Bruce was dismissive at first. He happened to walk into the premiere at the same time I did, and he was with a friend of mine, the comedian Rick Ducommun, who introduced us. Bruce had already been nominated for an Emmy for Moonlighting twice by then (he would win the award the next month), but I didn’t watch much television and had never seen the show—my only familiarity with his work was from one of those Seagram’s Golden Wine Cooler commercials he used to do. (Remember those? He’d blow a few bluesy chords on the harmonica and wail, “It’s wet and it’s dry! My, my, my.”) We both had deals with TriStar Pictures, so I said, “I hear you have the good office at TriStar.” He replied with something short, like, “I’m never there.” My impression was, he’s kind of a jerk.
But when I saw him at the after-party at El Coyote, Bruce was suddenly much more solicitous. “Hey, can I buy you a drink?” he asked, as soon as I walked in. I told him I didn’t drink. “Well let me buy you a Perrier,” he countered. Bruce—who’d been a bartender in New York City before he became a television star—was showing off behind the bar that night, tossing the cocktail shaker in the air, the kind of thing that seemed cool in 1987 but sounds cringeworthy now, and Emilio had a point: Bruce was looking at me a lot as he went through his bar moves. He was so attentive as the evening progressed, I was stunned to find out later that he’d actually been on a date that night with another woman!
When it got late, people were going to see Rick Ducommun do a stand-up set at the Improv. “You should come! You should come!” Bruce and Rick implored me. I could see Emilio wasn’t thrilled by all the attention they were paying to me—I wish I’d been a little less thrilled myself. But the club was on my way home anyway, so I figured I’d stop by. When I got there, I could see all of Bruce’s buddies sitting at a big table. Next to them, Bruce had set a table for two, with a Perrier waiting for me. He jumped up and pulled out my chair.
I’d never encountered treatment like this before. Bruce was so gallant—in his own boisterous way, a real gentleman. When I said it was time for me to go home, he offered to walk me to my car. He was so eager about it—like a little boy who didn’t want to miss the ice-cream truck. When he asked for my number, I felt a wave of schoolgirl flutters. “Do you have a pen?” He checked his pockets and came up empty. “Don’t leave!” he said, and went skittering off to get one. Then he wrote it on his arm—a sight I’d see a million times over the years; Bruce was always writing things on his arm. But that first time, I noticed that his hands were shaking. He was so vulnera
ble in that moment: all of the bravado was gone.
I drove home replaying the events of the night. What just happened? I wondered. Who is this guy? I was trying to add up all the information that had just come at me. (This was before cell phones; it’s not like I could call around asking people about him.) I’d never actually had anyone ask me out on a real date before. I’d met Freddy through the music scene and Emilio on set; the relationships I’d had up to this point had just sort of happened through proximity and flirtation. But this did not feel like a pickup—this was not somebody who was trying to add a notch to his belt.
Bruce was so dynamic. One thing he’s never had a problem with is taking his space. (He’s definitely never asked, Is it okay that I’m here?) I felt a pang of concern for Emilio—even though he had invited me as “his friend” that evening, I was aware that he had hopes of repairing our romance.
Fifteen minutes later, I was cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway toward my new house in Malibu, all the way out past Point Dume. To my right were the mountains and the stars, to my left was the moonlit ocean. Everything was peaceful. I thought about Emilio; I thought about Bruce. And then I could swear I heard my name in the wind. No, it wasn’t my dad visiting from the spirit world: it was a stretch limousine in the next lane, with Bruce Willis and his buddies poking up through the open sunroof, waving and shouting, “Hey, Demi!” (This was before the days of the ever-present black SUVs ferrying celebrities everywhere. When Bruce was partying, he’d hire a limo to take him and his friends out for the night in style.) I couldn’t believe I was looking out my window at the guy I’d just been thinking about. It was like the universe was telling me: pay attention to this one.