JULIANNE MOORE, LEADING LADY & INDEPENDENT FILMS

Today, The Grandma is still working in her Communication Skills course with Els Tintorers. They have been talking about communication in acting and leading ladies roles with the great example of Julianne Moore, the American-British actress and author well-known by her leading lady roles, who was born on a day like today in 1960. A leading lady is the female actor who has the most important part in a play or film.

Julie Anne Smith (born December 3, 1960), known professionally as Julianne Moore, is an American-British actress and author.

Prolific in film since the early 1990s, she is especially known for her portrayals of emotionally troubled women in both independent and blockbuster films, and has received many accolades, including an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globes. Time magazine named Moore one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2015.

After studying theatre at Boston University, Moore began her career with a series of television roles. From 1985 to 1988, she was a regular in the soap opera As the World Turns, earning a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance. Her film debut was in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), and she continued to play small roles for the next four years, including in the thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992).

Moore first received critical attention with Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), and successive performances in Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and Safe (1995) continued this acclaim. Starring roles in the blockbusters Nine Months (1995) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) established her as a leading lady in Hollywood.

More information: Julianne Moore-Instagram

Moore received considerable recognition in the late 1990s and early 2000s, earning Oscar nominations for Boogie Nights (1997), The End of the Affair (1999), Far from Heaven (2002) and The Hours (2002). In the first of these, she played a 1970s pornographic actress, while the other three starred her as an unhappy, mid-20th century housewife. She also had success with the films The Big Lebowski (1998), Magnolia (1999), Hannibal (2001), Children of Men (2006), A Single Man (2009), The Kids Are All Right (2010), and Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), and won an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Sarah Palin in the television film Game Change (2012).

Moore won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her playing an Alzheimer's patient in Still Alice (2014) and was named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Maps to the Stars (2014). Her highest-grossing releases include the final two films of The Hunger Games series and the spy film Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017).

In addition to acting, Moore has written a series of children's books about a character named Freckleface Strawberry. She is married to director Bart Freundlich, with whom she has two children.

Moore was born Julie Anne Smith on December 3, 1960, at the Fort Bragg army installation in North Carolina, the oldest of three siblings. Her father, Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, attained the rank of colonel and became a military judge. Her mother, Anne was a British psychologist and social worker from Greenock, Scotland, who immigrated to the United States in 1951 with her family.

Moore has a younger sister, Valerie Smith, and a younger brother, the novelist Peter Moore Smith. As Moore is half-Scottish, she claimed British citizenship in 2011 to honor her deceased mother.

More information: The Guardian

Moore moved to New York City after graduating, and worked as a waitress. After registering her stage name with Actors' Equity, she began her career in 1985 with off-Broadway theatre. Her first screen role came in 1985, in an episode of the soap opera The Edge of Night.

The filmmaker Robert Altman saw Moore in the Uncle Vanya production, and was sufficiently impressed to cast her in his next project: the ensemble drama Short Cuts (1993), based on short stories by Raymond Carver.

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw Moore achieve significant industry recognition. Her first Academy Award nomination came for the critically acclaimed Boogie Nights (1997), which centers on a group of individuals working in the 1970s pornography industry.

Moore has been described in the media as one of the most talented and accomplished actresses of her generation.

As a woman in her 50s, she is unusual in being an older actress who continues to work regularly and in prominent roles. She enjoys the variety of appearing in both low-budget independent films and large-scale Hollywood productions.

Alongside her acting work, Moore has established a career as a children's author. Her first book, Freckleface Strawberry, was published in October 2007 and became a New York Times Best Seller.

Moore has received five Academy Award nominations, nine Golden Globe nominations, seven SAG nominations, and four BAFTA nominations. From these, she has won an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and two SAG Awards; she also has a Primetime Emmy and a Daytime Emmy.

More information: Screen Rant

I'm looking for the truth.
The audience doesn't come to see you,
they come to see themselves.

Julianne Moore