Julianne Moore On Why ‘May December’ Was So Hard To Do, Her ‘Gift’ To Natalie Portman, Plus ‘Big Lebowski’, Sarah Palin & More – The Actor’s Side

With a Best Actress Oscar, some Emmys, Golden Globes and more, awards are something Julianne Moore knows well. Therefore the buzz around her performance in May December should come as no surprise, and for a role she says is one of the hardest she has ever attempted, Moore is already a Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award Best Supporting Actress nominee and a good bet for more to come. As Gracie, a woman who became a tabloid fixture after getting romantically involved with a teenager, serving prision time, and then marrying him in a union that now has crossed 20 years, Moore dives into the emotional powderkeg the part requires and knocks it out of the park. This is her fifth cinematic collaboration with director Todd Haynes, a partnership that produced such classics as Far From Heaven and the eerily prescient 1995 drama, Safe. She talks about all of this and more as my guest this week on my Deadline video series, The Actor’s Side.

Along with our conversation about May December, which co-stars Natalie Portman and Charles Melton and which premiered in Cannes where it was picked up by Netflix for one of the biggest deals of the 2023 festival circuit, we talk about memories and observations on the cult hit The Big Lebowski, the unique challenge of playing Sarah Palin in another Emmy winning performance in Game Change, the person who changed her life by encouraging her to act, how she accesses emotion, and the trick in her current film of being an actor playing a fictional “real” person being portrayed by another actor (Portman) playing a fictional actress in a movie within the movie. You don’t want to miss the fascinating details of how Moore pulled this all off and the physical affectations she added as a gift for Portman to add to her performance. It is like a master class on the craft of acting.

To watch our conversation and to get the ‘actor’s side ‘ of things from Julianne Moore, just click on the link above.

Join me every Wednesday during Oscar season for another episode of The Actor’s Side.