Usually in interviews, stars will tell you that they don't look at the internet. They take issue with, among other things, the web's propensity for false rumours, misinformation and paparazzi shots. So it is a surprise when a celebrity actively encourages the public to get to know them better by seeking them out online. But Demi Moore, in almost three decades in the limelight, has proven that she is no ordinary star.
Log onto Twitter and look her up - her alias is mrskutcher - and you can see her regular tweets, from calls to support Ted Kennedy's proposals for the Serve America Act to random comments such as: "Any secrets for winning at beach volleyball besides cheating?" Read through the messages and you will see that Moore has an infatuation with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, a liking of guacamole with chips, and is urging a fan not to have plastic surgery to look more like her. She has even put videos of herself out with her husband and manager online. Last week, she made headlines when her husband Ashton Kutcher, 15 years her junior at 31, posted a candid picture of her on his Twitter page.
No matter how fun the cyberworld is, and Moore for one obviously thinks it's a gas, it still comes a distant second to hearing someone voice their opinion in the flesh. That chance came recently at the Berlin Film Festival, where Moore was in attendance at the world premiere of her quirky new film Happy Tears, directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, son of the pop artist Roy, who previously directed the comedy horror Teeth.
In Happy Tears Moore plays Laura, the mature older sister who watches in a mixture of bewilderment and horror as her vacuous younger sister, played by Parker Posey, wanders aimlessly through life. Both siblings are forced to address their relationship with each other when their father, played by Rip Torn, finds himself in need of round-the-clock care. Once together, a host of family issues come to the fore including Laura's own difficulties juggling her role as an environmentalist with being the mother of two young children. It does not take long for repressed childhood memories to spring out of the closet.
It's an ultra-low-budget independent film, but that didn't stop Moore wanting to be in it. "I think what attracts you is a combination of who you get to work with and how interesting the material is," she says. "I enjoyed Mitchell's first film. I found it captivating. Happy Tears I found to be charming in this out-of-the-box perspective of what we might consider to be normal." It's a change in direction for the 46-year-old actress. After all, we're more used to seeing her in big-budget action films such as Charlie's Angels or playing extraordinary women as she did in Michael Radford's 2007 movie Flawless, in which she stars as a frustrated worker who helps to commit a bank robbery in 1960s London.
Lichtenstein reveals that this change in direction was one of the reasons that he thought Moore would be so perfect for the part. "I've always loved Demi's work," he says. " I was excited about her playing a normal person. It was not a high-glamour part and it's been a long time since Demi has done that. I wanted to see her do it and luckily she was ready." Moore says that she has an unusual instinct that lets her know that a role is right for her: "I usually know that I'm interested in doing something if I start to feel uncomfortable, if it is something that I am a little afraid of. Then I know that it is exactly what I need to be doing. It has to be something that is illuminating, that is smart, works as a whole and has a lot of challenging aspects to it."
When she made Flawless, her emphasis was as much on the people that she was going to be working with as the script. Michael Caine stars opposite her as the disgruntled janitor, with whom she teams up for the robbery. "The script was just sent to me, with Michael Radford attached. It was something that Michael Caine had a passion to do and, reading the script, I couldn't imagine anyone else beside Michael Caine playing Hobbs," she says.
She adds that one of the unforeseen benefits of doing Happy Tears was that her relationship with Posey blossomed. She adds: "I think the gift of the film is that Parker and I had an opportunity that doesn't happen very often. We did nearly every scene together, we had to go to set at the same time, stayed in the same hotel and travelled together. In actual fact, we got to live like sisters and we walked away with a friendship that doesn't always happen when you work on a movie with someone."
The importance of family in the story also struck a chord with Moore. She says that in this respect her character in Happy Tears closely resembles her own. "I certainly keep my family in the forefront of my mind," she says. "That is what you have at the end of your life and work is something you get to do. In the family dynamic, I sort of have things I can relate to, especially with my character, Laura, being the overburdened sister and the caretaker. In the film the sisters have a dynamic where each one of us is looking to find something in ourselves which the other has. It's only through the dysfunction that the opportunity is created that we can share those things."
Moore has three children - two girls and a boy - from her marriage to Bruce Willis. As is not the case in many Hollywood divorces, the former couple share an amicable relationship, as does the whole extended family. Kutcher even used Twitter to attack Paris Hilton when she claimed that Moore's oldest daughter, Rumer, had a silly-looking chin. Rumer Willis is following her parents' footsteps into acting. Moore is delighted that this gives them an opportunity to operate outside of the family dynamic.
She says: "I only have one child who is interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry and I did a movie with her when she was just seven years old. I had an opportunity recently to direct her in a short film and it was an interesting way to interact with her and get to know a different side of her. I'm definitely open to acting with her again." The short film Streak is Moore's first time behind the camera and, perhaps unsurprisingly given Moore's Twitter fixation, the story concerns the relationship a young woman has with the internet. It addresses the impersonal nature of modern communication without being a rant against technology. The film recently played at the Miami Film Festival, much to the director's pleasure. The move behind the camera seems to be something that is increasingly appealing for the actor.
Moore attributes much of her recent creative impulses to the man in her life. She says of her husband: "I think this incredible love and support that he provides gives me greater courage to take more risks and to strive to be a better person." Their warmth for each other is very clear in their public Twitter interactions. The woman of today could hardly be more different from the star who once seemed to epitomise the excess of the Eighties. She was one of the original members of a group of actors dubbed the Brat Pack and played a wild child in the iconic college movie St Elmo's Fire. She seemed destined to play the wayward girl in real life as well, but her career and outlook changed when Bruce Willis came into her world.
All of a sudden the actress was making more mainstream appearances, starring in Neil Jordan's We're No Angels alongside Sean Penn. Then in 1990 came the film that propelled her to superstar status, Ghost, in which she played a woman struggling to cope with the death of her fiancé, portrayed by Patrick Swayze. In the 1990s Moore could take any role of her choosing and she had a penchant for tough and sassy women, or those facing moral dilemmas. However, after two very different roles in GI Jane and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, motherhood forced her to take a break.
In between the big-budget movies, Moore managed to fit in a couple of smaller productions such as Now and Then and Passion of the Mind. But she doesn't see the divide between a studio film and an independent production as being so great any more. "I think every project that you step into has an element of risk," she says. "The company you keep and the stories that you get to tell are much more important. I think that, in today's world, independent cinema is no riskier than a studio film." That's why we're likely to see Moore in more independent productions or behind the camera from now on. If she can pull herself away from Twitter.