Demi Moore stars in the intense new “beauty-horror” film “The Substance,” from French director Coralie Fargeat, which hits U.S. theaters this week after taking the Cannes and Toronto Film festivals by storm earlier this year. The film is a searing examination of aging, beauty standards and the desire to stay forever young, in a story that leverages Moore’s star persona as a beauty (and body) icon of the 1980s and ‘90s.
She plays an older actress being replaced in her job as a television fitness star, who decides to undergo a mysterious anti-aging/biohacking treatment known as “the substance.” Ultimately, she ends up with a younger, more beautiful doppelganger (Margaret Qualley), who finds fame, adoration and success, until the balance between the two beings is interrupted.
It’s one of Moore’s best performances of her career, and because it uses her star power and persona so deftly, “The Substance” occasions a rewatch of her best and most memorable film roles. So here’s the best of Demi Moore’s work and where to stream each title.
Moore was famously a member of the “Brat Pack” in the 1980s, co-starring in one of the ur-texts for that group of actors, Joel Schumacher’s “St. Elmo’s Fire” (1985). Following a group of college grads navigating life and love in Washington, D.C., the film co-stars Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Mare Winningham, Judd Nelson and Andie MacDowell (who happens to be the mother of her “The Substance” co-star Qualley). Rent it on iTunes or Amazon.