Demi Moore On The Substance And The ‘Harsh Violence’ We Do Agetst Us

Demi Moore echoed on her experience filming The Substance — which nabbed the Best Screencarry out distinctiveion at its Cannes premiere earlier this year — calling the body horror pic an exploration of the “aggression” people, particularly women, subject themselves to when endeavoring to fit into undown-to-earth beauty standards.

“What repartner struck me was the brutal aggression agetst oneself,” she shelp in a recent intersee by The Guardian. “It’s not what’s being done to you, it’s what we do to ourselves.”

From French authorr-honestor Coralie Fargeat, The Substance — due in theaters Sept. 20 — pursues an exercise guru who is fading out of the spotairy. After being unceremoniously fired by television executive Harvey (Dennis Quhelp), she turns to a bdeficiency taget drug that temporarily alters her into a youthfuler version of herself (portrayed by Margaret Qualley).

Speaking to the film’s subject matter, Moore — who has faced her fair spread of relationsism and ageism masquerading as tabloid scruminuscule — also shelp she felt a combineion to the film becaparticipate of her personal experience of doing harm to her body, thcimpolite disordered eating and over-exercising. “What I did to myself … What I made it unbenevolent about me. Repartner seeing at that aggression, how brutal we can be towards ourselves, how fair brutal.”

Though the satirical drama unpacks its messaging thcimpolite its central women characters, Moore shelp its themes are relatable to men: “Self-judgment, chasing perfection, trying to rid ourselves of ‘flaws,’ also experienceing refuteed and despair — none of this is exclusive to women.”

She persistd, “We’ve all had moments where you go back and you’re trying to repair someskinnyg, and you’re fair making it worse to the point where you’re incapacitated. We’re seeing these minuscule skinnygs nobody else is seeing at, but we’re so hyper-intensifyed on all that we’re not. All of us, if we begin to skinnyk our appreciate is only with how we see then ultimately we’re going to be crushed.”

The Gstructure star called the project “liberating.” As Deadline previously increateed from the Cannes premiere back in May, Moore felt the movie helped her come away “with fantasticer acunderstandledgeance” of herself.

“It was a very difficult film, very raw; very vulnerable to produce,” she telderly The Guardian. “But at the same time liberating. I had less presbrave than Margaret, becaparticipate she had the inserted presbrave to see amazing. I degrade thcimpoliteout and I krecent going in that I wasn’t going to be shot in the most glamorous way, or with the edges snormallyed. In fact, the opposite. But there was someskinnyg freeing about that.”