Demi Moore

Moore began acting in 1981, and appeared on the soap opera General Hospital (1982–1984).^[15] After departing the show, she rose to prominence as a member of the Brat Pack, starring in the films Blame It on Rio (1984), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), and About Last Night... (1986).^[16] She earned recognition and stardom for her role in Ghost (1990), which was the highest-grossing film of its year. She had further box-office successes with A Few Good Men (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), and Disclosure (1994), and received $12.5 million to star in Striptease (1996), becoming the highest-paid actress to that point. Moore was considered to be one of the most bankable stars of the 1990s.


Moore's career saw a downturn after the films The Scarlet Letter (1995), The Juror (1996), and G.I. Jane (1997) fell below commercial expectations.^[17][18] Since then, her career has seen a resurgence with roles in Passion of Mind (2000), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Bobby (2006), Mr. Brooks (2007), Flawless (2008), Margin Call (2011), and Blind (2017).^[19] Her television projects include If These Walls Could Talk (1996), Empire (2015–2017), Brave New World (2020), and Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (2024). Her memoir Inside Out (2019) became a New York Times Best Seller.^[20][21][22]


Moore has been married thrice. From 1981 to 1985, she was married to musician Freddy Moore. From 1987 to 2000, she was married to Bruce Willis, with whom she has three daughters.^[23] She was married to Ashton Kutcher from 2005 to 2013.

Early life

Moore was born November 11, 1962, in Roswell, New Mexico. Her biological father, Air Force airman Charles Foster Harmon Sr.,^[24] left her then 18-year-old mother, Virginia (née King),^[25] after a two-month marriage before Moore was born.^[26] Charles came from Lanett, Alabama, and Virginia was born in Richmond, California, but had grown up in Roswell.^[27] Moore's maternal grandmother was raised on a farm in Elida, New Mexico.^[27] Moore has deep roots in the South Central and Southern United States, particularly Oklahoma, Arkansas and Georgia. When Moore was three months old, her mother married Dan Guynes, a newspaper advertising salesman who frequently changed jobs; as a result, the family moved many times.^[28] In 1967 they had Moore's half-brother Morgan.^[29] Moore said in 1991, "My dad is Dan Guynes. He raised me. There is a man who would be considered my biological father who I don't really have a relationship with."^[26] Moore has half-siblings from Charlie Harmon's other marriages, but she does not keep in touch with them either.^[30]


Moore's stepfather Dan Guynes married and divorced Virginia twice.^[31] On October 20, 1980, a year after their second divorce from each other, Guynes died by suicide.^[26][32] Her biological father Harmon died in 1997 from liver cancer in Brazoria, Texas.^[33][34] Moore's mother had a long arrest record which included drunk driving and arson.^[35] Moore broke off contact with her in 1989, when Guynes walked away halfway through a rehab stay Moore had financed at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota.^[2] Virginia Guynes posed nude for the magazine High Society in 1993,^[36] where she spoofed Moore's Vanity Fair pregnancy and bodypaint covers and parodied her clay scene from Ghost. Moore and Guynes reconciled shortly before Guynes died of a brain tumor on July 2, 1998.^[37]


Moore spent her early childhood in Roswell, and later, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.^[38] Bob Gardner, a photographer for the Monongahela Daily Herald when Dan Guynes was head of advertising, recalled that Moore "looked malnourished and not so much abused as neglected. That haunting look as a child made me feel uneasy."^[39] She suffered from strabismus, which was corrected by two operations, as well as kidney dysfunction.^[28] Moore learned that Guynes was not her real father at age 13, when she discovered a marriage certificate and inquired about the circumstances since she "saw my parents were married in February 1963. I was born in '62."^[26]


At age 14, Moore returned to her hometown of Roswell and lived with her grandmother for six months before relocating to Washington state, where her recently separated mother was residing near Seattle.^[40] Several months later, the family moved again to West Hollywood, California, where Moore's mother took a job working for a magazine distribution company.^[26] Moore attended Fairfax High School there.^[26] She moved out of her family's house the day after her 16th birthday and quit high school in her junior year to work as a receptionist at 20th Century Fox.^[41]


In 2019, she stated she was raped at 15 by landlord Basil Doumas, then 49.^[42] Doumas claimed he had paid Moore's mother to get access to Moore to rape her, although Moore said it is unclear if this were true.^[43][44]