Cover Demi Moore at the 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards 2025 in Los Angeles. (Photo: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
Demi Moore at the 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards 2025 in Los Angeles. (Photo: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
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Demi Moore’s filmography is a masterclass in playing complicated women. She took risks, played sexy, tried messy, been terrifying, done unhinged. Yet after 40 years, Hollywood is only rewarding her now
Decades ago, Demi Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. She’s appeared in smash hits, critical darlings and everything in between. Yet, she’s never received the same reverence as, say, Cate Blanchett or even Sandra Bullock.
At the 82nd Golden Globes where she won Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, Moore poignantly revealed, “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress’ and, at that time, I made that mean that this [award] wasn’t something that I was allowed to have. That I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in and I believed that.”
Moore built a career playing women who were powerful yet vulnerable, ambitious, beautiful, in control. On screen and off, she took on Hollywood’s entrenched misogyny and ensured her characters weren’t just accessories—they were complicated, commanding and, often, ahead of their time.
Moore was widely expected to finally take home her first Oscar for The Substance, and while Mikey Madison took home the trophy in an upset, the nomination is good opportunity to revisit some of her most underrated performances—the ones that prove she was always more than just Ghost and gossip.
Also read: 5 stirring acceptance speeches that stole the show at the 2025 Golden Globes
1. ‘Striptease’ (1996)
No, it’s not exactly the best film in the world. Yes, it was marketed as Demi Moore, The Stripper Movie, but Striptease goes beyond her infamous US$12.5 million paycheck and the pearl-clutching reaction it got in the ’90s. Moore plays Erin Grant, a former FBI secretary turned exotic dancer, who is battling a corrupt system for custody of her daughter. The script is hardly Pulitzer material but Moore gives Erin a rare dignity. There’s no self-pity, no damsel-in-distress act—just a woman using the cards she’s been dealt. If you can get past the neon-soaked premise, Striptease plays like a dark satire of power, sex and politics (with Burt Reynolds in baby oil, no less).
Also read: How Hollywood’s leading women are making ties the ultimate power move
2. ‘G.I. Jane’ (1997)
It’s only fitting to place Striptease and G.I. Jane—the two films Demi Moore herself calls the most underrated of her career—side by side. Fresh off the back of her record-breaking paycheck for a film that holds a grim 13 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, G.I. Jane was supposed to be her redemption arc. Instead, it cemented her as Hollywood’s favourite punching bag. And yet, Moore stands by both choices, believing they were ahead of their time. “It wasn’t about me; it was about changing the playing field for all women. But because I played a stripper, I betrayed women. And because I played a soldier, I betrayed men.”
Ridley Scott’s military drama sees Moore as Jordan O’Neil, the first woman accepted into Navy SEAL training, enduring brutal physical and psychological hazing. The film itself is uneven—both a critique of institutional misogyny and, at times, a weirdly fetishised parade of female suffering, but Moore is astonishing. She commits fully, transforming into a symbol of sheer willpower.
See more: Dunkirk, The Hurt Locker, Saving Private Ryan, and more: action-packed war movies to watch
3. ‘Disclosure’ (1994)
Long before #MeToo forced Hollywood to reckon with power dynamics in the workplace, Disclosure gave us Demi Moore as the ultimate corporate femme fatale. In this Michael Crichton adaptation, she plays Meredith Johnson, a high-ranking exec who flips the script on workplace harassment—pursuing her former lover (Michael Douglas), then accusing him of misconduct when he rejects her. The film is pure ’90s erotic thriller excess, but Moore plays Meredith with such icy control that you almost believe she’s justified. It’s campy, provocative and a fascinating time capsule of the era’s anxieties about women in power.
4. ‘Deconstructing Harry’ (1997)
Demi Moore in a Woody Allen film? It happened, and somehow, no one talks about it. Deconstructing Harry is one of Allen’s most biting, acidic works: a self-referential, self-loathing trip through the mind of a writer who destroys every relationship he touches. Moore plays Grace, a woman in the throes of religious and moral crises, caught up in Harry’s whirlwind of dysfunction. While the film is mostly remembered for its star-studded cast (Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and a blink-and-you-miss-it Tobey Maguire), Moore delivers one of its most quietly effective performances. She might have been part of the Brat Pack, but she could slip into cerebral, ensemble-driven storytelling easily.
5. ‘Mortal Thoughts’ (1991)
If you ever wanted to see Demi Moore and Glenn Close wrapped up in a murder mystery before Big Little Lies made it fashionable, Mortal Thoughts is your answer. Moore plays Cynthia, a woman whose best friend’s abusive husband (Bruce Willis, no less) winds up dead, setting off a tangled web of lies and suspicions. The film has all the hallmarks of an underseen thriller. It is dark, stylish and soaked in early-’90s neo-noir moodiness. It also lets Moore tap into something quieter but just as compelling as her more famous roles: the way she can radiate guilt, uncertainty and a certain world-weariness with just a flicker of her expression.
Also read: What to expect from Nicole Kidman's new HBO thriller mini-series
6. ‘Please Baby Please’ (2022)
Demi Moore in a 2022 queer, neon-lit fever dream of a film? What moore can you ask? Please Baby Please is part musical, part gender-bending exploration of desire and part West Side Story meets A Clockwork Orange. Here, the Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle actress is the perfect choice for a faded, dramatic, borderline unhinged femme fatale. Her performance is pure stylised excess, and yet, there’s something deeply vulnerable under all the artifice.
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