Julie Anne Smith (born December 3, 1960), known professionally as Julianne Moore, is an American actress. Prolific in independent films and blockbusters since the early 1990s, she is particularly known for her portrayals of emotionally troubled and vulnerable women. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Additionally, she is one of only two women to have won an acting award at each of the world's three major film festivals (the Volpi Cup, the Silver Bear for Best Actress and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress).
After studying theater at Boston University, she had a regular role in the soap opera As the World Turns from 1985 to 1988, earning a Daytime Emmy Award. Moore made her breakthrough with Robert Altman's ensemble film Short Cuts (1993), followed by a critically acclaimed performance in Todd Haynes' Safe (1995). Starring roles in the blockbusters Nine Months (1995) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) established her as a Hollywood leading lady. She received Oscar nominations for her roles as a 1970s pornographic actress in the drama film Boogie Nights (1997) and emotionally unsatisfied housewives in the period dramas The End of the Affair (1999), Far from Heaven (2002), and The Hours (2002).
Moore's career progressed with roles in The Big Lebowski (1998), Magnolia (1999), Hannibal (2001), Children of Men (2006), A Single Man (2009), The Kids Are All Right (2010), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), and Maps to the Stars (2014). She won a Primetime Emmy for playing Sarah Palin in the HBO film Game Change (2012), and the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of an Alzheimer's patient in Still Alice (2014). Her highest-grossing releases came with the final two films in The Hunger Games film series (2014–2015) and the spy film Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). Since then she starred in independent films and streaming projects including Haynes' drama May December (2023), the historical drama miniseries Mary & George (2024), and the black comedy limited series Sirens (2025).
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 and they have two children. In 2015, Time named her to its 100 most influential people in the world list and in 2020, The New York Times named her one of the greatest actors of the 21st century.
Julie Anne Smith was born on December 3, 1960, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Her father, Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, attained the rank of colonel and became a military judge. Her mother, Anne (née Love 1940–2009), was a psychologist and social worker from Greenock, Scotland, who had migrated with her family to the United States in 1951. Moore has a younger sister and a younger brother, the novelist Peter Moore Smith. Having a Scottish mother, Moore claimed British citizenship in 2011 in her honor.
Due to her father's occupation, Moore frequently moved around the United States as a child. She was close with her family as a result, but says that she never had the feeling of coming from one particular place. The family lived in multiple locations including Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Panama, Nebraska, Alaska, New York, and Virginia, and Moore attended nine different schools. The constant moving around made her an insecure child, and she struggled to establish friendships. In spite of the difficulties, Moore has remarked that an itinerant lifestyle was beneficial to her future career: "When you move around a lot, you learn that behavior is mutable. I would change, depending on where I was... It teaches you to watch, to reinvent, that character can change."
When Moore was 16, the family moved from Falls Church, Virginia, where Moore was attending J.E.B. Stuart High School, to Frankfurt, West Germany, where she went to Frankfurt American High School. She was clever and studious, a self-proclaimed "good girl", and she planned to become a doctor. She had never considered performing or even attending the theater, but she was an avid reader which led her to begin acting in school productions. Moore appeared in several plays including Tartuffe and Medea, and with the encouragement of her English teacher, she chose to pursue a theatrical career. Her parents supported her decision, but asked that she train at a university to provide the added security of a college degree. She was accepted into the Boston University College of Fine Arts in Boston and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater.
Early work and breakthrough (1985–1993)
Moore moved to Manhattan, New York after graduating and worked as a waitress. After registering her stage name with Actors' Equity, she started her career in 1985 off-Broadway. Her first screen role came in 1984, in an episode of the soap opera The Edge of Night. Her break was a year later when she joined the cast of As the World Turns. Playing the dual roles of half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes, she found the intensive work to be an important learning experience and she said, "I gained confidence and learned to take responsibility."
Moore performed on the show until 1988, when she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Ingenue in a Drama Series. Before leaving As the World Turns, she had a role in the 1987 CBS miniseries I'll Take Manhattan. Once she finished her contract at World Turns, she played Ophelia in a Guthrie Theater production of Hamlet opposite Željko Ivanek. The actress returned intermittently to television over the next three years, appearing in the TV movies Money, Power, Murder (1989), The Last to Go (1991), and Cast a Deadly Spell (1991). In 1990, Moore began working with stage director Andre Gregory on a workshop theatre production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Described by Moore as being "one of the most fundamentally important acting experiences I ever had", the group took four years to explore the text and then give intimate performances to friends. Also in 1990, Moore made her cinematic debut as a mummy's victim in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, a low-budget horror that she later called "terrible".
Her next film role, in 1992, introduced her to a wide audience. The thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle—in which she played the main character's ill-fated friend—was number one at the US box office, and Moore caught the attention of several critics for her performance. She followed it the same year with the crime comedy The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag, appearing as the protagonist's kooky sister. She continued to play supporting roles throughout 1993, first featuring in the erotic thriller Body of Evidence as Madonna's love rival. The film was panned by reviewers and heavily mocked, and Moore subsequently regretted her involvement—terming it "a big mistake". She had greater success in a 1993 romantic comedy with Johnny Depp. In Benny & Joon, Moore played a gentle waitress who falls for Aidan Quinn's character, Benny. She also appeared briefly as a doctor in one of the year's biggest hits, the Harrison Ford-starring thriller The Fugitive. 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. Moore was pleased to work with him, as his film 3 Women (1977) gave her a strong appreciation for cinema when she saw it while in college. Playing artist Marian Wyman was an experience she found difficult, as she was a "total unknown" surrounded by established actors, but this proved to be Moore's breakthrough role. Todd McCarthy called her performance "arresting" and remarked that her monologue, delivered naked from the waist down would "no doubt be the most discussed scene" of the film. Short Cuts was critically acclaimed and received awards for Best Ensemble Cast at the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Globe Awards. Moore received an individual nomination for Best Supporting Female at the Independent Spirit Awards, and the monologue scene earned her a degree of notoriety.