Demi Moore 'Never Imagined' the 'Degree of Controversy' Her Pregnant “Vanity Fair ”Cover Would Bring

The actress revisited quotes from a 1996 interview to see how her comments hold up today

Demi Moore is taking a stroll down memory lane.

In an Interview Magazine story published on Sept. 11, 2024, the 61-year-old actress revisited comments she made in the magazine way back in July 1996, covering the public’s reaction to some of her most controversial films and her infamous 1991 Vanity Fair cover.

Moore made headlines in 1996 for her $12.5 million paycheck for Striptease, which made her the highest-paid actress in Hollywood history up to that point. At the time, she told Interview that she was proud of the record-breaking payday, “because it could have been anybody.”

“What I was really saying is that it just so happened to be me, but the more important point is that it happened,” she said looking back at the 1996 quote. “It was a game changer for women to basically be paid on par, but it was reduced to the idea that because I was playing a stripper, it had less value.”

She also reflected on the public’s response to the film and 1997’s G.I. Jane.

“For me, [Striptease] was about a mother trying to survive and take care of her child, and it just so happened that stripping was a means to an end,” she said. “Because I did two films back-to-back, Striptease and then G.I. Jane, and at the same time, there was all of this press about me becoming the highest-paid actress. I think that one film, in a sense, was seen as betraying women, and one was seen as betraying men. At that point, they just weren’t ready to let that win. I just happened to be the symbol holding it at the moment.”

She also said that her 1996 comments that Striptease “changed my perception of me” still ring true today.

“It was terrifying for me to do that role, to have to be on a stage, to be portraying someone who was a stripper and removing my clothes,” she explained in the more recent story. “It empowered me in a way that was less about those I was dancing for, and more about how I experienced myself.”

In the 1996 interview, Moore also dismissed negative reviews of her film performances, even as Interview’s Hal Rubenstein noted that Ghost was an exception.

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Flash forward to today, and Moore has a different take. “Ghost got horrible reviews,” she said. “I remember seeing the movie and thinking it was great, and then the first reviews were awful. I was so out of my body, because all of a sudden, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can trust myself because I thought it was good?’ At that moment, I decided to not read reviews, because you have to give equal value to the good and the bad.”

Of her 1991 Vanity Fair cover, on which the then very pregnant actress appeared nude, Moore said in 1996 that she didn’t realize the photos would cause the “degree of controversy” they did.

Today, she explained that she was already seven-and-a-half months pregnant when the magazine approached her to appear on the cover.

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“Obviously, we did some images clothed, but at the end of the shoot, we did other ones of me nude. I remember saying to [photographer Annie Leibovitz], ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if they used this for the cover?’ ” Moore recalled. “Then two weeks later, Annie calls me to say, ‘Hey, I’m sending you the image. How would you feel about letting them use this for the cover? Or we could do the one of your hand covering your breast.’ ”

“It’s not that I was entirely naive, but I never imagined it would have the impact that it did,” she said, echoing her 1996 comments, “because I was just reflecting how I felt — that women had not had an opportunity to express themselves while pregnant.”

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