New Delhi: Famed American actor Demi Moore has said she was apprehensive of the number of sex scenes in the movie Indecent Proposal but finally decided to act in it as it was a ‘great story’ and a ‘great director’ was making it.
“My heart sank as I read the script for my next picture and noted the number of sex scenes I had ahead of me. I wanted to do the movie because it was a great story,” she has written in her memoir ‘Inside Out’ which hit the stands recently.
The 1993 film is about a young couple David and Diana Murphy, played by Woody Harrelson and Moore, who go to Las Vegas in the hope of winning enough money to finance their dream home, which the husband, an architect, wants to build.
Instead, they lose all their savings. But Diana catches the eye of a billionaire (Robert Redford), who makes them an offer: he’ll give them a million bucks to spend one night with her.
They are conflicted, but they accept, and the story goes on from there.
Indecent Proposal was directed by Adrian Lyne, known for his moody, sexually charged films – Fatal Attraction, Flashdance and Jacob’s Ladder.
Moore says she made a deal with Lyne: ‘he would be free to shoot the sex scenes however he wanted, but in the end I could review the footage and if there was anything I felt was too invasive or gratuitous, he would cut it’.
It was an arrangement that ‘required a lot of trust on both our parts, and I appreciated his willingness to collaborate like that’, she says.
And then Moore prepared herself for the role. “All I could think about was my body, my body, my body. I doubled down on my already over-the-top exercise routine. I cut out carbs, I ran and I biked and I worked out on every machine imaginable in the gym we’d installed in the house in Hailey. I was actually feeling comfortable with how I looked when I went in to see Adrian about a month later to talk about costumes,” Moore has said.
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” Lyne told her when she walked in for their meeting. Initially, she took that as a compliment but later came to know that Lyne in fact wanted her to gain at least 10 pounds.
The movie made a whopping USD 24 million box office in just five days when it opened on April 7, 1993. Though it was universally panned by critics and women’s groups, who objected to Moore’s character being used as barter, the movie ended up making over USD 260 million worldwide.
In the book, published by HarperCollins imprint 4th Estate, Moore tells her story in an intimate and emotionally-charged manner.
For decades, she has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight or the headlines.
Even as Moore was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood.
Throughout her rise to fame and during some of the most pivotal moments of her life, Moore battled addiction, body image issues, and childhood trauma that would follow her for years – all the while juggling a skyrocketing career and at times negative public perception.
As her success grew, she found herself questioning if she belonged in Hollywood, if she was a good mother, a good actress – and, always, if she was simply good enough.
In her candid memoir, Moore pulls back the curtain and opens up about her career and personal life – laying bare her tumultuous relationship with her mother, her marriages, her struggles balancing stardom with raising a family, and her journey toward open heartedness.
‘Inside Out’, according to the publishers, is a story of survival, success, and surrender – a wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman’s at once ordinary and iconic life.
