Julianne Moore Talks To 'Harper's Bazaar' About The Secret To A Happy Marriage
The Still Alice actress opened up to the mag about the secret to her happy marriage with American film director Bart Freundlich, who she has been married to since 2003. "One thing is not to spend too much time apart. You cannot be intimately involved in somebody else's life if you are not there. The same way that you can't parent someone if you're not there: you know you have to be present," Moore explained.
"We love to be at home. We love family time with our kids, with each other and our dog, and we love to watch movies together and cook and eat together," she continued, adding: "I feel grateful I have a relationship that's as rewarding as it is, because it's something I really wanted to have."
Moore also spoke about the importance of a balanced professional and personal life, and reflected on how hard she found filming British historical drama television miniseries Mary & George in the U.K. because she had to be away from her husband for several months. "It was the first time I'd said, I don't have kids at home. I can actually go away and be on location somewhere. And it was way harder than I anticipated. So that was an interesting lesson," she recalled.
"I don't want to be away for months at a time without my husband. I want a community, I want to be with my family, I want to see my girlfriends – and I want to do nuanced, interesting, compelling work and be able to support myself," she continued. "Life is really short, and I don't want to throw it away on one thing, you know? I really do want to have all of it."
Julianne Moore On Her 'Dark' And 'Tortured' Character In 'May December'
The Golden Globe winner then went on to talk about how she struggled with her "tortured" May December character Gracie, whose story is said to be inspired by the real-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. Letourneau, who died of cancer in 2020, was a Seattle school teacher who was sentenced to seven years in prison after having an affair with a 13-year-old boy (Fualaau.) She became pregnant with Fualaau's children twice before he was 15.
"I started digging around with the part, trying to figure it out, but I was like, oh my God, this is so hard! Gracie is a person who's really tortured. It's dark stuff," she confessed. "What was interesting to me was the distance between the narrative she projects, of this great love story and the choice she was compelled to make out of love, and what actually happened. The transgression is so vast that there's a tremendous amount of tension and emotional volatility underneath."
Moore added: "When you see Gracie lose it, that unbridled emotion is where she is all the time. Even in the scenes where she appears to be placid, there's that underneath it, always."