Julianne Moore

By Nicholas Barber

1993 SHORT CUTS, MARIAN WYMAN
Well, that’s one way to get noticed. Julianne Moore was born in 1960, as Julie Smith, but her big break didn’t come until Robert Altman cast her in “Short Cuts”. And even then, her dreamy painter didn’t stand out from the starry crowd for over two and a quarter hours. Then came that speech: a furious confession, delivered while undressed from the waist down. Afterwards, Moore was known for being fearless, superb at dialogue, and capable of hurricane-force emotional outbursts. And, often, half-naked.

1997 BOOGIE NIGHTS, AMBER WAVES
Moore’s characters tend to be so comfortable with sex and nudity that James Bond would blush in their presence. Her matter-of-factness has never been more sensational than in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights”. When Moore’s porn star, Amber Waves, is instructing Mark Wahlberg’s Dirk Diggler on the ins-and-outs of their imminent sex scene, she is hilariously reassuring and gentle. You don’t stop laughing until you realise why Amber is being so tender: she sees Dirk as a surrogate son.