On this date in 1960, actress Julianne Moore (née Julie Anne Smith) was born in Fayetteville, N.C. Her mother was a Scottish social worker and her father an American military judge. She traveled around the world with her parents, graduating from Frankfurt American High School in Germany in 1979. Julianne earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of the Performing Arts in Boston University in 1983.
After appearing in theater, TV soaps, miniseries and TV movies, she caught directors’ eyes when appearing in supporting roles in several movies, including “The Fugitive” (1993). Her breakthrough role was in “Safe” (1995), followed by movies such as “Nine Months” (1995), “Assassins” (1995), “Surviving Picasso” (1996), playing Dora Maar, “Boogie Nights” (1997), “The Big Lebowski” (1998), “An Ideal Husband” (1999), “Magnolia” (1999), “End of the Affair” (1999), “Evolution” (2001), “The Hours” (2002), “Far From Heaven” (2002), “The Kids Are All Right” (2010) and “Crazy, Stupid, Love” (2011).
Moore went on to give an Academy Award-winning Best Actress performance in 2014 as an Alzheimer’s patient in “Still Alice” and was named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for “Maps to the Stars,” also in 2014. She also appeared in the final two films of “The Hunger Games” series and starred in the spy film “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” (2017). She is a pro-choice advocate who is active with Planned Parenthood.
She co-starred with Tilda Swinton in “The Room Next Door” in 2024, Pedro Almodóvar‘s first English-language feature film which won the Golden Lion at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Moore married actor and stage director John Gould Rubin in 1986, and after a 1995 divorce started a relationship in 1996 with Bart Freundlich, her director on “The Myth of Fingerprints.” They have a son, Caleb, born in 1997, and a daughter, Liv, born in 2002. Moore and Freundlich married in August 2003.
PHOTO: Moore in London at the premiere of “The Room Next Door” in 2024; photo by Raph_PH under CC 2.0.
