Disordered eating, drug abuse, celebrity, cheating, and being cheated on are some of the topics explored in actor Demi Moore’s upcoming memoir Inside Out. I’m sure all of that is equally harrowing and juicy, depressing and powerful, and all of the things a revealing celebrity memoir should make one feel. But I’m stuck on her taxidermy.
As discussed in Dave Itzkoff’s New York Times profile of Moore pegged to her book (in stores September 24), Moore has stuffed her “home high above Beverly Hills” with stuffed animals, and—twist—they are extremely specific types of dead animals. Writes Itzkoff:
She has surrounded herself in her home with small, affectionate dogs with names like Merple, Diego and Sousci Tunia, and she also collects taxidermy — like the baby zebra near her fireplace — of animals that she said “have had unfortunate early passings.” (She said she also had “a stillborn deer” in her home in Hailey, Idaho.)
On one hand, it’s sad when animals die young. On the other, they clearly have the best death imaginable by being placed in the house of a Hollywood millionaire. When God closes a door, Demi Moore opens a window and is like, “Hop in.”
This is also fun:
At the start of our conversation she swigged on Starbucks and switched midway to alternating between sips of Red Bull and drags from a caffeine vape pen.
This is not fun, but interesting:
While partying with Rumer in 2012, Moore suffered a seizure after smoking synthetic cannabis and inhaling nitrous oxide.
This is not interesting or fun:
Moore said she has maintained her sobriety and that she, Rumer and Scout are seven months into a 10-month course on spiritual psychology, which she said teaches “soul-centered living.”
This is probably more along the lines of something you wanted to read when you opened this post:
Moore and [Ashton] Kutcher married in 2005 and pursued fertility treatments in hopes of getting pregnant again. But her drinking worsened, and she started abusing Vicodin, all before learning that Kutcher had cheated on her.
This is what Moore has to say about her early days pioneering pay equity for women in Hollywood:
To have been a trailblazer in this way, she said, “was an honor, and with that came a lot of negativity and a lot of judgment towards me, which I’m happy to have held if it made a difference.”
Does she think it did? I asked.
After a long pause she answered, “I do, actually. I know that it really resonated.” But, she added, “It’s not about me doing it. I was just the instrument by which it was done. Clearly it didn’t do enough because we’re still, this many years later, dealing with it.”
This is a quote from Gwyneth Paltrow, a “friend”:
Paltrow, in particular, credited the memoir with helping to reduce Moore’s health problems by unburdening her of the psychic baggage she’d been carrying. As women, Paltrow said, “We think we just have to get through everything and bear the burden for everyone in our family.”
DISCUSSION
I need to get in on this “spiritual consultant to the stars” thing. It seems like there’s good money to be made.