“We have maintained being a family in various forms,” Moore tells PEOPLE in the World’s Most Beautiful issue
Demi Moore’s definition of beauty is simple.
“In a way, beauty just is. You can look at a flower and see its beauty,” says the star, 62, who graces the cover of the World’s Most Beautiful issue. “On a human level, I find it’s authenticity and positivity. Beauty comes out of comfort with being exactly who you are.”
It’s a theme she explored for her role as an aging star fitness instructor in the horror hit The Substance. “I think there’s there’s an aspect that we all have experienced, which is compare and despair,” Moore says of the film.
“And it isn’t necessarily just about our outsides. It’s that harsh, self-critical judgment. And everyone who’s in the public eye does face a little more judgment and harsher external criticism. I think the thing that was so relatable is really that violence we can have against ourselves.”
Looking back, Moore says she first realized she could make it as an actress after being cast on General Hospital just shy of her 19th birthday. “It was like a real job where I was going to have an actual salary, meaning I didn’t have to have another job,” she adds. “I could live by doing this thing that I loved and hoped I could do. But I really never felt like I knew what I was doing. I didn’t really study. I really did come from the university of Fake It Till You Make It. Everything for me was watching, listening and learning from fellow actors.”
Despite long being a beauty icon, the actress insists she also went through an awkward phase growing up. “None of us can escape that,” she says, laughing. “I had amblyopia, which is a wandering eye. When I was 5, it had crossed all the way in, and I had surgery to pull it out. So I had a very awkward time. And I can think in particular of an image with this bad haircut when the winged look came along. I may have been 11 or 12 in a jean jacket that had this red-and-white fabric with a bow. It was really not attractive.”
Moore wrote in her 2019 memoir about her strained relationship with her alcoholic mother. Now she tells PEOPLE that experience shaped how she wanted to raise her own daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, whom she shares with ex Bruce Willis.
“For many, many years that was really about not wanting my kids to ever experience certain things that I had,” she adds. “It created a real drive in me to want to look for opportunities to transform and become the best version of myself.”
Moore explains she had “a pendulum swing where I didn’t want to burden my children, I never let them see me emotional,” she says. “I really see now how important that is for our children to see us sad and see that we walk through it and get to the other side. It’s okay to be angry and move through it. There’s a lot I’ve learned and some I wish I had figured out sooner, but I also trust that it all happens in its right time.”
Though her marriage to Willis ended in 1998, the two have remained close as coparents. Moore insists she is most grateful “that regardless of what the outside relationship has been, we have maintained being a family in various forms,” she says of Willis, who has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. “The foundation of making our children our priority has never wavered.”
Demi Moore Says Ex-Husband Bruce Willis ‘Will Always Be Family: ‘There Is Life After Divorce’
Now a “Yaya” to her first grandchild, Moore says being there with all of her daughters for the birth of Rumer’s daughter Louetta in April 2023 was “really incredible. Rumer was at Scout’s birth; Scout and Rumer were at Tallulah’s birth,” she recalls. “Rumer had a home birth, and there was a moment when I thought, ‘Oh boy, I don’t know if she’s going to make it,’ like she has a different pain threshold than I do. To just see her move into her own power and focus, it was a really extraordinary, beautiful moment.”
The actress’ gratitude list these days includes “my family, including my four-legged family, my children and all of the incredible, loving people in my life,” she says. “I feel really so lucky.”
