The Poster Actress of Queer-Friendly Cinema, Julianne Moore

Back in 1988, Julianne Moore won an Emmy for her roles as identical twins in the daytime CBS soap As the World Turns for the category of Outstanding Ingénue in A Drama Series. Six years later, she appeared bottomless in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993) proving to the world that, in fact, her carpet matches her crimson curtains. Those two roles may be worlds apart. Yet, they not only show Moore’s range but also her foremost asset as an artist: she has a mean streak for taking risks. Other actresses are more beloved or more successful, but no other film performer has been willing to court failure as often as Moore, or be as much a hero to gay audiences and directors alike.

After breaking through in Short Cuts, New Queer Cinema pioneer Todd Haynes cast Moore as Carol White in Safe (1995), using her translucent skin and fragile features to heartbreaking effect. Moore’s Carol, afflicted with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, develops an allergy to everything around her and is lured into believing low self-esteem causes her malady. Though it sounds like melodrama, Safe is gore-less horror in which our heroine literally disintegrates before our eyes. In P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997), Moore created Amber Waves, a girly-voiced, coked-up porn star. Fifteen years later, it remains startling (and subversive for a film that has such mainstream cred) to hear Moore’s Amber tell Mark Wahlberg’s Dirk Diggler to come inside her. Continuing to subvert expectations, Moore’s Amber is not a forgotten victim but cleans up her act and forges a successful career as a TV commercial director.

Wedged between those seminal performances are Moore’s attempts at courting commercial appeal in the Hugh Grant vehicle Nine Months (Chris Columbus, 1995), action-thriller Assassins (Richard Donner, 1995) and Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World (Steven Spielberg, 1997). She even took over for Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling in the sequel to Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal (Ridley Scott, 2001). Though she is the only thing that makes Hannibal watchable, appearances in these lackluster blockbusters only add to her star appeal. Maybe some view it as paycheck acting, but Julianne Moore is a journeyman, taking roles that expose her to broader audiences and enable her to hone her craft.

She was ubiquitous from 1998-99, delighting art audience as a villainess in An Ideal Husband (Oliver Parker, 1999), charming the Academy as Ralph Fiennes’ beautiful ex-mistress in The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan, 1999) while being at turns quirky, irritating and miscast in supporting turns in The Big Lewbowski (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1998), Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 1998), Cookie’s Fortune (Altman, 1999), and Magnolia (Anderson, 1999). Look at the list of independent and commercial directors she has worked with. Moore seems less vested in landing iconic roles or successful vehicles than with the potential of a fulfilling artistic collaboration.

2002 was a watershed year for Moore. In Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, an homage to Douglas Sirk melodramas, Moore’s Cathy Whitaker speaks in meek whispers and is paralyzed by her mid-century, middle-class American oppression. It is unclear whether women acted this way back then or if only women in filmed melodramas did. Moore plays the latter. It is a strategy that alienated casual viewers and attracted critics. But repeat viewings of the film only highlight how much rage and pain burn beneath Cathy’s placid face when she attempts to reconcile her marriage to a closeted gay man. Moore did a naturalistic variation on Cathy, as stranded, closeted fifties housewife Laura Brown in The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002). The scene in which she cries in a bathroom while re-assuring her husband that she will be right out to celebrate her young son’s birthday is a devastating representation of onscreen depression. She got Oscar nominations for both films (Best Actress & Best Supporting Actress, respectively). Both films are pretty gay, having been directed by queer filmmakers and featuring an assortment of homosexual characters in different time periods. With Far From Heaven, The Hours and her impeccable gallery of roles in seminal independent cinema of the previous decade, Moore became the poster actress for queer-friendly cinema.

Since then, Moore’s resume is as eclectic as ever, appearing in a rom-com with Pierce Brosnon, playing an amnesiac mother in forgettable The Forgotten (Joseph Ruben, 2004), getting killed off in her first scene in The Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006), doing the requisite guest stint on 30 Rock and returning to her soap roots during "As the World Turns’" swan song. She even played an heiress mother who seduces her gay son in Savage Grace (Tom Kalin, 2007). In Tom Ford’s A Single Man (2009), she was middle-aged fag hag Charley who has a reunion date with gay pal George (impeccable Colin Firth). Within Charley, like Carol White, Amber Waves, Laura Brown and Cathy Whitaker, there is sadness and gravity—a tangible hurt. That hurt is what Julianne Moore often brings to the cinematic table along with the chutzpah to dress Charley in an unflattering dress in Tom Ford’s otherwise obsessively-tailored mise-en-scene. It is a small, deliberate choice that really differentiates Charley from everything else and humanizes her from the gloss sticking to A Single Man.

Last year, Moore played Jules, the philandering half of a lesbian duo costarring Annette Bening, in The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010). Jules is a dissatisfied and adventurous lesbian landscaper who has an affair with her children’s sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo). While Bening and Ruffalo scored Oscar nominations, Moore was overlooked for giving the film’s most uncompromising performance. Jules is such a free spirit that she has children with a lesbian, screws straight Mark Ruffalo, drinks too much and likes to watch gay porn. People like their heroes saintly (Bening) and their villains devilish (Ruffalo), so Moore’s confused, dithering, contradictory and all-too-human Jules, the catalyst for all the characters’ growth in Kids, no doubt confounded and probably irritated audiences. But Moore is the heart of that film.

Moore is currently the print model for clothing retailer Talbot’s. At first glance, alongside a lovely photograph of a smiling Moore wearing a blazer, the ad campaign seems strained with the copy reading: “We believe blazers are beautiful, but trailblazers are stunning.” But on second glance, for once, the ad people aren’t guilty of hyperbole. Moore really has blazed a trail of portraits, queer and gay-friendly, like no other screen actor. And it makes me giddy not knowing what Julianne Moore will do next. But I know it will be remarkable.

- Randy Caspersen