Demi Moore Should Win the Oscar (But Not for the Reason You Think)

Demi Moore has a good chance to take home her very first Oscar for Best Actress this year for her work in The Substance, and she absolutely deserves it. It’s a bold, unconventional, surprisingly thoughtful film that the Academy typically overlooks, anchored by one of the most exciting Hollywood comeback stories in years. However, it’s that comeback story that has positioned Moore as the likely winner, more than the performance itself. Oscar campaigning has become its own unique art form over the past few decades, and there are few things more powerful than a good story to go along with a buzzy performance.

If Moore walks away with a statuette on March 2nd, she will join a number of performers who made a big, gutsy move after years away from the spotlight, and ended up rewarded with Oscar glory. Recent winners like The Whale’s Brendan Fraser or Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Jamie Lee Curtis and Ke Huy Kwan followed similar comeback arcs, and plenty of actors have won Oscars for roles that might not be their best work, but represent the culmination of their years in the business. Moore could very likely be the next winner to follow this path.

The Substance

4.5
/5

Release Date

September 20, 2024

Runtime

140 Minutes

Director

Coralie Fargeat

Demi Moore’s Comeback Saga

It should be said that it’s not that Moore doesn’t do a good job in The Substance, or that the praise she’s received is undeserved. Rather, it’s unlikely that the same role inhabited by another actor would have been in the awards conversation to the same degree. It’s true the Academy voters do love a performance that has to work through some sort of major physical transformation, and Moore’s role as a former fitness guru whose body becomes increasingly grotesque as the film goes on falls into that category, but Elisabeth Sparkle is really more of a symbol than a fully inhabited character.

The Academy has a well-documented aversion to nominating horror films or performances, and it’s very likely that The Substance wouldn’t have been nominated at all without the star at its center. This isn’t to take away from the film’s many merits, and its nomination will hopefully make the Academy look closer at horror in the future, but the story of Moore’s return to the spotlight after years spent largely away from the public eye has become inextricable from the movie itself. It’s the kind of Hollywood tale, one of overcoming adversity and throwing off expectations, that Academy voters find hard to resist.

Moore’s arc may be most similar to Fraser’s work in The Whale, another performance from a former major player whose star had faded over the years, and who acted under heavy prosthetics to cast off any lingering trace of vanity. Regardless of how people might feel about The Whale or Fraser’s performance in it, it was exciting to root for him to take home the awards because of the journey it took to get there, particularly for millennials who had fond memories of his work in nostalgic films like The Mummy or George of the Jungle. For a lot of movie fans, it’s been similarly fun to root for Moore, as a former box office draw who hadn’t been taken seriously as an actor in the past.

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Beyond just Moore’s personal journey, her Oscar nomination is buyoed by the way The Substance works as a sort of meta-commentary on ageism in Hollywood, particularly among women performers. Moore’s lived experience greatly informs her performance as Elisabeth, a character largely valued for her looks and youthful vigor who is cast aside when the powers that be deem her too old. Moore was considered one of the preeminent Hollywood sex symbols of her day, and a pioneer in terms of shattering expectations around women aging in the movie business (the media uproar in the early ’00s around her wearing a bikini at 40 is sadly still timely today), so her nomination feels like a part of that ongoing conversation.

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Academy Award nominations can often speak to something larger than just the performances themselves, and can say something about the way the movie business views itself and wants to be viewed by the world at large. It’s entirely possible that the voters might favor someone like I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres, a fellow awards darling and only the second actress from Brazil to be nominated (following her own mother, Fernanda Montenegro), or may use the category to assert its position in the face of recent anti-woke backlash (though given the controversies around Karla Sofía Gascón, maybe not this year).

Particularly as the Academy voting body has become younger and more diverse, there’s been a welcome push to award underrepresented figures, whether from marginalized communities or individuals who have been sidelined by the business over the years. Moore’s awards praise and possible Oscar victory for The Substance is a combination of all of these things, as well as one other universal truth: everyone loves a good Hollywood comeback story.