Coffee Break

photo by Mark Seliger

DEMI MOORE'S DREAM LIFE: THE INTERVIEW

She's lived in the spotlight for decades, but with her modern family, fresh style, and takeover of Twitter, the actress is ahead of her time. See the Demi Moore cover shoot.

BY LAURA BROWN

Demi Moore has a wonderful life up in the Hollywood Hills. She lives in an aerie that could fit a giraffe, has a chef that makes delicious vegetably things that make you feel like a better person, and serves more beverages than you can poke a stick at (coconut water? Red Bull?). Add to that, she married Ashton Kutcher, the dude who lost his car but found love with a woman 15 years his senior and scooped up three stepkids, Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah, in the bargain.

Today, Demi is plopped on the floor of her screening room — huge man-size television, paintings of bears, orange shag rug — in vintage high-waisted 501s, a T-shirt that says WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, and thick black glasses. (Baby's first glasses are on her childhood Twitter profile pic.) She is drinking Vita Coco coconut water, since she's weaned herself off an "eight-a-day" Red Bull habit. "I don't like drinking water, so this is great," she says. Ask her the secret to her age-defying hotness (obviously not traditional hydration) and she replies, "Hotness? Well, if you want to look at how dorky I am." But look no further than her hands for a little movie-star fabulosity: two diamond Cartier Panthère rings. Panthères as in panthers, which some people call pumas. Demi likes pumas; she infinitely prefers them to cougars. "Cougar has become so distasteful," she says, nose wrinkling. "I really hate that expression." She said recently that when it comes to her relationship, she'd prefer to be called a puma. "It has a sweeter quality, more elegant. And then somebody said to me, 'Pumas are only for people in their 30s.'"

Eh? It's like navigating a Hugh Hefner version of Animal Planet. "Somebody really offended me on Twitter by saying, 'How is that better, switching from one predator to another?' I wrote back, saying it's important to keep your sense of humor."

Demi has these cyberdebates daily. She and Ashton have famously launched themselves into the Twitterverse, she with two and a half million followers, he with four and a half million. It's a brave new world of accessibility: Search for "mrskutcher" and see everything from their recent trip to Africa (elephants!)to pictures from this shoot (giraffes!) to Demi's "bad-hair" night at home when Ashton was at the Golden Globes. "I was sick," she says, laughing. "Bad hair was an unfortunate by-product."

But, more important, Demi uses Twitter as a forum for her calls for awareness of sexual trafficking and slavery. The couple recently established the DNA Foundation, which has been working with the State Department. "It is something that we are committed to, particularly as it relates to underage girls," she says. "We want to have some effects on legislation in the U.S." She is practicing what she preaches: More than half of her posts are on the subject, directing followers where to get involved.

So, do the Kutchers have a stake in Twitter or what? "Do not. We should, but no, to be very clear, we have no side financial relationship whatsoever." So basically — for now anyway — they just dig it. "I like to connect to people in the virtual world," she explains, "exchanging thoughts and ideas, when in the physical world we might never have the opportunity to cross paths."

But being so out there — even virtually — can cut both ways, as Demi has discovered. For every few "Demi, I love you/your hair/your husband"s, there's a bitch or two or three. That said, she relishes the fact that she can speak for herself. Recently, it was to have her say in the controversy over the alleged retouching of her hip on the cover of W magazine late last year.

"Okay, that is literally my shape," Demi says, sticking her leg out for effect. What bothered her, she says, "wasn't that people were saying it was retouched, it was that they were saying my hip was so badly botched because a hunk of it was taken out. I called the photographers, and they said, 'We did not touch anything on your hip, your thigh, or your waist. It was the position.' Actually, somebody sent me an image I retweeted on Twitter. It was this beautiful marble statue, and the body position was exactly the same as what I was doing. This person had outlined how the hip goes in and the leg goes out." So silence thee, hip haters.

Being snake-hipped is fabulous for fashion, though. But Demi, who is a size 2, tops, recently discussed the shrinking size of models with her friend, Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz. "Models, even male models — how small they've gotten! It looks great for the clothes, but it's not what you want in real life. Why do we have to keep looking at ourselves and measuring?"

Demi has long supported young American designers (she was one of the first to wear Proenza Schouler and is a big fan of rising star Prabal Gurung), as much as she loves her Lanvin. She has "two modes: baggy boyfriend jeans and a T-shirt with a little cardigan and ballet flats. And then I have the other part of my life that's dress-up." That translates into slinky cocktail numbers that are as glossy as her famous mane of hair. In this session, Demi wears an abstract print dress from the late Alexander McQueen. "McQueen was a genius," she says. "I was always thrilled to wear his clothes because they were more than fashion; they were truly works of art." She sees more in fashion than just clothes. "I met Roland Mouret the other night, and he said, 'Fashion is a language without words.' That's why I love it."

When Demi met Kutcher at a play in New York in 2003, she was doing "dress-up" — to be specific, wearing a strappy blue Proenza Schouler cocktail dress. In short, she winks, it was "the dress that gets results." Common lore has it that the pair were introduced by that erstwhile cupid, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, but no. "It was another friend," Demi says with a smile, stirring the vegetable concoction brought in by her smiling lady chef. "It was an effective evening. It was a life-changing evening."

And it was a feverishly documented courtship. "I knew it had the potential to be something special right away," she says. "It was like meeting somebody that I've just known where you just recognize one another. It was so disproportionate, the level of emotion we were experiencing to the time we had spent together. But when you don't know someone, you can't just jump and say 'I love you.'" Nice to meet you, I love you! "Yeah. No. We used to end our calls or e-mails with 'And everything we don't say.' It just seemed too much, too soon."

And here they are, seven years after meeting and five after marrying. When not on set, red carpets, or school runs, the two stay at home and watch Hoarders, Intervention, and Demi's new favorite, Jersey Shore ("It's an accident waiting to happen, and so you can't not look"), and sometimes even propositioning each other via — you guessed it — Twitter.

In her own way, Demi has been a face of every decade. She grabs the zeitgeist and runs with it, from '80s Brat Packer to '90s box-office empress to this new decade's queen of celebrity cyberspace. "I have three kids, so I'm surrounded by teenagers," she explains, "and I'm married to a younger man. But I think it's generally being interested in where the world is going."

And despite what antiaging ads say, growing older can be better. "I feel better in my skin, 100 percent," she says. "That's the tradeoff. You have greater effects of gravity, but the better sense of yourself you have is something I wouldn't trade. Women who lie about their age — why?" She'll try a new skin cream (her latest, Stemulation, along with the Clarisonic Opal, a sonic skin-care machine), "but I'm not an extremist. I mean, I'm not risky with haircuts. Someone did just bring me the latest fad from Russia, though," she laughs. "Horse shampoo and conditioner."

This month, Demi is returning to territory as familiar as that epic head of hair: the movies. In The Joneses, a satire of consumerism, she stars opposite David Duchovny as a member of a fake family employed to plug commercial goods. "The heart of the story is people who have leveraged their lives for stuff, for that external measure of success," she says. "But stuff doesn't make us happy." Yeah, apart from the leopard Yves Saint Laurent dress that Demi swans about in; good luck not wanting that.

Demi Moore, movie star for more than two decades, still has keeping-up-with-the-Joneses moments. "I think Ashton would say I want a butler. Knock on the door and he says, 'Good afternoon, Ms. Moore will be with you directly.'" She cackles while her chef comes to clear the plates. "That would be good."

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/cover/demi-moore-cover-interview-0410


COVER SHOOT (see Demi’s pictures): http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-articles/demi-moore-cover-shoot-0410


April 2010