Demi Moore’s no-holds-barred memoir, Inside Out, is an irresistible look at her life from abused teenager to Hollywood megastar
Inside Out
Demi Moore Fourth Estate £20
In the Nineties Demi Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Ghost, Indecent Proposal and A Few Good Men rocketed the raven-haired, husky-voiced New Mexico native into the stratosphere.
She was an icon of tough-yet-vulnerable femininity who appealed equally to both sexes. Fast-forward to 2012 and 49-year-old Moore is convulsing in front of her eldest daughter and a room full of party guests.
She’s inhaled some nitrous oxide and some super-strong synthetic marijuana and is minutes away from death. She’s just conscious enough, though, to beg onlookers not to call 911. If an ambulance arrives, she knows that the humiliating headlines – ‘Demi Moore rushed to the hospital on drugs’ – will not be far behind. And that is exactly what happens.
In the Nineties Demi Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood when films such as Ghost (above with her co-star Patrick Swayze) rocketed her into the stratosphere
The way Moore tells it in this no-holds-barred memoir, she never stood a chance. Both her parents were alcoholics and from the age of eight little Demi – named after a beauty product that caught her teenage mother’s eye – was cast in the role of caretaker.
One of her early memories is of scooping the semi-digested pills out of her mother’s mouth following yet another suicide attempt. When she was just 15, Demi was raped by a middle-aged man who casually asked the weeping teen ‘How does it feel to be whored by your mother for 500 dollars?’ It turns out that Ginny had arranged for her gentleman friend to have access to her little girl in return for a cash hand-out.
No wonder Demi gradually turned to alcohol and drugs herself to dull the pain. By the time she was becoming a solo star at the age of 19, Hollywood was already buzzing with rumours that the new girl was out of control. She was ordered to rehab and managed to stay off drink and pills for the next 20 years.
From now on she channelled her demons towards her body. Told off for being a little too fat for the camera, she embarked on a strict diet. On her next film the director hissed at her she ‘looked like a man’ and ordered her to gain all the weight back. The stage was set for a punishing eating disorder that saw Moore alternately binge and starve.
She thought nothing of setting the alarm for 1:30am so that she could do several hours’ exercise before heading off for the studio. There’s no denying the results, though. In 1991 Demi became the most famous cover star of all time when she appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, buck naked and seven months pregnant. She looked magnificent.
She is happy to give us all the down-and-dirty details about marriage to Bruce Willis. Just as you might expect, the hard man hero didn’t care for having a wife who was more successful than he was.
Her next husband, Ashton Kutcher, 15 years her junior, sounds spectacularly immature. The know-all 25-year old told Demi that alcoholism wasn’t ‘a real thing’ and encouraged her to break her sobriety with a beer, which promptly sent her spiralling back down to addiction. During their six-year marriage, Moore claims that Kutcher also introduced her to threesomes and then proceeded to cheat on the side.
This makes Inside Out sound like a cheap revenge memoir. But honestly it’s not. If Demi Moore is hard on anyone, it’s herself. And the big helpings of vintage showbiz gossip – anyone remember Emilio Estevez whom Moore was engaged to at one point? – makes the end product irresistible.