‘It’s the beginning’: Demi Moore wins her first major acting award at the Golden Globes

Dhanika Pineda | January 6, 2025

Actress Demi Moore took home the Golden Globe for best performance by a female actor in a musical or comedy on Sunday night. The win was Moore’s first-ever acting award in her storied career.

Moore, 62, won the Globe for her starring role in The Substance. In her acceptance speech, she said she thought she was done with acting until The Substance script came along.

Though the film has brought her a milestone award, Moore doesn’t see it as a culmination of her career but rather as the start of a new chapter, she said when the film first came out in September.

“It’s the beginning,” Moore told NPR’s Tonya Mosley on Fresh Air. “I’ve never been where I am exactly in this moment. My children are grown. I have the most independence that I’ve ever had. And so it’s just this wonderful new time of exploration and discovery … I just want to stay present to where I am and be open to the possibilities.”

The Substance follows Moore’s character, Elisabeth Sparkle, as she takes a mysterious drug meant to transform her into a better version of herself. Moore told Mosley that she brought her own lived experience to the role.

“I don’t know if I was more perfect than someone else, but I definitely felt that I had a body of experience that really could be brought to it,” Moore said.

Her daughters, Scout, Tallulah and Rumer Willis, are also celebrating Moore’s win. The trio shared a video on Instagram Sunday night reacting to their mother’s win.

“This is a huge win for EVERYONE,” Scout Willis commented on the post.

On Sunday night, Moore said on the Golden Globes stage that she was once called a “popcorn actress,” a label which made her feel like she could not be acknowledged in the industry. She ended the speech by celebrating the win as a “marker of [her] wholeness” and the love that drives her.

“In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough, or skinny enough or successful enough, or basically just not enough,” Moore said. “I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know, you will never be enough. But you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.'”