Demi Moore 'Never Imagined' the 'Degree of Controversy' Her PregnantVanity FairCover Would Bring

Mar. 15, 2025

Demi Moore in 1996.Photo:Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Demi Mooreis taking a stroll down memory lane.

Moore made headlines in 1996 for her $12.5 million paycheck forStriptease, which made her the highest-paid actress in Hollywood history up to that point. At the time, she toldInterviewthat she was proud of the record-breaking payday, “because it could have been anybody.”

“What I was really saying is that it just so happened to be me, but the more important point is that it happened,” she said looking back at the 1996 quote. “It was a game changer for women to basically be paid on par, but it was reduced to the idea that because I was playing a stripper, it had less value.”

She also reflected on the public’s response to the film and 1997’sG.I. Jane.

“For me, [Striptease] was about a mother trying to survive and take care of her child, and it just so happened that stripping was a means to an end,” she said. “Because I did two films back-to-back,Stripteaseand thenG.I. Jane, and at the same time, there was all of this press about me becoming the highest-paid actress. I think that one film, in a sense, was seen as betraying women, and one was seen as betraying men. At that point, they just weren’t ready to let that win. I just happened to be the symbol holding it at the moment.”

“It was terrifying for me to do that role, to have to be on a stage, to be portraying someone who was a stripper and removing my clothes,” she explained in the more recent story. “It empowered me in a way that was less about those I was dancing for, and more about how I experienced myself.”

In the 1996 interview, Moore also dismissed negative reviews of her film performances, even asInterview’s Hal Rubenstein noted thatGhostwas an exception.

Demi Moore in 1990’s ‘Ghost’.CBS via Getty

CBS via Getty

Flash forward to today, and Moore has a different take. “Ghostgot horrible reviews,” she said. “I remember seeing the movie and thinking it was great, and then the first reviews were awful. I was so out of my body, because all of a sudden, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can trust myself because I thought it was good?’ At that moment, I decided to not read reviews, because you have to give equal value to the good and the bad.”

Of her 1991Vanity Faircover, on which the then very pregnant actress appeared nude, Moore said in 1996 that she didn’t realize the photos would cause the “degree of controversy” they did.

Today, she explained that she was already seven-and-a-half months pregnant when the magazine approached her to appear on the cover.

Demi Moore in 1991.Bill Nation/Sygma via Getty

Bill Nation/Sygma via Getty

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“Obviously, we did some images clothed, but at the end of the shoot, we did other ones of me nude. I remember saying to [photographer Annie Leibovitz], ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if they used this for the cover?’ ” Moore recalled. “Then two weeks later, Annie calls me to say, ‘Hey, I’m sending you the image. How would you feel about letting them use this for the cover? Or we could do the one of your hand covering your breast.’ ”

source: people.com