Iconic Hollywood star unrecognisable after hit horror film transformation

Fans of horror film were surprised this year to see a legendary actress deliver one of the best performances of her career - with the make-up team also working hard to make her look impossibly old

Legendary Hollywood star Demi Moore is generating Oscars buzz for her latest role - and the make-up team deserve recognition too.

The 61-year-old star has left cinema fans horrified by her latest film The Substance. Something of a modern day The Picture of Dorian Gray, the film sees Demi playing an aging actress named Elisabeth Sparkle who unlocks the secret to youth by taking a chemical that allows her to experience life as someone much younger.

The role also sees Demi's character age drastically over the course of the film - with prosthetics making her unrecognisable in her role. The film - which was released last month - has been deemed a career defining moment for the iconic GI Jane actress with many predicting she will win the Best Actress Oscars at the 2025 ceremony.

Variety wrote of the film in September: [The Substance is a] dark exploration of youth, beauty and the relentless demands on women in Hollywood, it’s a visual stunner with jaw-dropping prosthetics and an engrossing narrative. It’s already generating buzz after debuting at Cannes, but now adding Toronto Film Festival to the mix, it’s become a fan (and industry) favorite and could be on the road to the Academy Awards."

Speaking about her time filming the role, Demi told The Independent: “It’s not a glamour role. I knew going in that I had to be vulnerable and raw.” She added: “I’m not Elisabeth, but I could find pieces of her that connected with me, and I knew that if I tried her on for a few months and went on this journey with her, it would lead to something greater for myself.”

Speaking to The Guardian, she said of the film: “What really struck me was the harsh violence against oneself... It’s not what’s being done to you, it’s what we do to ourselves.”

Discussing the film's themes, she went on: “Self-judgment, chasing perfection, trying to rid ourselves of ‘flaws,’ also feeling rejected and despair — none of this is exclusive to women.”

And she continued, “We’ve all had moments where you go back and you’re trying to fix something, and you’re just making it worse to the point where you’re incapacitated. We’re seeing these small things nobody else is looking at, but we’re so hyper-focused on all that we’re not. All of us, if we start to think our value is only with how we look then ultimately we’re going to be crushed.”

While Demi has enjoyed a long career that began in the 1980s - with early stand out roles including Ghost and Striptease - she has had a shaky success story. While her career fizzled in the 1990s, it was revived briefly in the 2000s when she starred in the Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle film and produced the Austin Powers film series. She has enjoyed a renaissance this year - having wowed TV fans with her performance in the Ryan Murphy anthology series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans and now with The Substance.

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