Julianne’s goodness of heart shines through

It was late in the afternoon last Sunday when this writer joined a dozen other journalists for a roundtable interview with Julianne Moore. We were on the 12th floor of the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and the sun was gleaming brightly through the curtains. When she walked in, she instantly noticed that the faces of a group of journalists, whose backs were against the window, were being drowned by the setting sun and, before she could even sit down, she offered to draw the curtains so she could see the faces of everyone.

 â€œGosh, you guys are so backlit, I am going to close that,” she said in her familiar soft voice. “I literally can’t see your faces at all.”

Julianne is a Hollywood icon. She’s considered one of the best actresses working right now and one of the few who is overdue for an Oscar. “I don’t know, I just won a bunch of awards last year, give me a break!” she lightheartedly chided this writer after I told her that many fans are wondering when will she get her Oscar. She won an Emmy and nearly every award she was up for last year for her turn as Sarah Palin in the HBO movie Game Change. When she is not acting, Julianne is also a New York Times best-selling author of children’s books and has penned four books already.

The beautiful actress is not what one would consider a box-office superstar but she’s among a few actresses who enjoy respect and love from her peers in the industry. She projects that aura of goodness about her and this writer saw a glimpse of that when she offered to pull the curtains herself instead of ordering an assistant to do it. This writer would see her good heart again later during the interview when she put on her maternal instinct and reminded us to treat Chloe Grace Moretz, her co-star in Carrie as a “teenager” and not a “grown-up.”

“I actually get very protective when people talk about how, ‘Oh goodness, isn’t she mature? Isn’t she grown-up?’” she reacted after one journalist remarked that Chloe seem so mature for her age. “She is, but she’s a teenager. She’s not a grown-up. And when people talk about her like that, I get, ‘Hey, back off!’ My son is also a very confident, kind of, mature boy but that doesn’t mean he’s a grown-up and that’s the way I used to feel about Chloe, too. I wanted her to feel safe with me and protected and that we will have a good time, we’re going to laugh. I hugged her a lot, I kissed her and I wanted to make sure that I was the one who was going to take care of her. Because she is an adolescent teenager, you know.”

This writer, surprised by the star’s passionate concern for Chloe, asked her what was wrong with people calling precocious kids like Chloe a grown-up. “She’s not grown-up,” she restated. “You shouldn’t make a child be a grown-up before they are ready. I really very firmly believe that people are minors for a reason. Don’t treat a child like a grown-up — they are not.”

 As Julianne was explaining to us why people should treat children as children, a sudden thought occurred to this writer: Damn, no wonder she’s so good as Margaret White in the movie, she protects Chloe the way Margaret protects her daughter (played by Chloe) in the movie!

Julianne and Chloe are co-starring in the MGM and Screen Gems modern-day adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel Carrie, which was originally made into a 1976 movie directed by Brian De Palma. In Carrie, Julianne portrays a strict mother with twisted religious beliefs who has shunned contact with people out of fear of committing any sins and instilled in her daughter the same fear. The daughter grows up terribly shy and is bullied in school for her lack of social skills. The movie and the book are famous for the climactic scene when Carrie finally gets her revenge against her tormentors. At the press screening that this writer attended, the audience loudly cheered for Carrie as she unleashed her hidden powers.

Margaret is a very strange character and we had to ask (in jest) Julianne if she was anything like her.

“People say I am strict,” she acknowledged but laughed soon after. Julianne has two kids, a 15-year-old son (who she said could watch Carrie) and an 11-year-old daughter (who can’t watch Carrie yet.) “My kids say I am pretty strict. We have a very close relationship with our children. We are a really tight family. There are lots of privileges that they have. They spend a tremendous amount of time with us so I think we know what’s going on with them. But there are certain things that you don’t allow because it’s not good for them and they’re not ready for it.”

Of course, her similarities to her character end with her being a strict mother and none of the religious fanaticism shown in the movie.

“The religion that she’s created is not based on anything but her own, probably, psychosis. I liked the idea of her needing very, very much to feel something and tend to punish herself somehow and make the daughter complicit in this punishment,” she said describing the mother’s psychology.

Another powerful theme tackled in the movie and the book is the subject of bullying. Bullying is not a modern-day phenomenon. Some consider it a rite of passage for many children. But in recent years, bullying has taken on a nasty turn and has evolved into more sinister acts causing permanent psychological damage to children and, as depicted in the movie, sometimes end in violence when some bullied kids, who are unable to cope, snap and exact revenge or commit suicide. (The book or the movie do not encourage nor promote this however.)

“What’s interesting to me about the novel and what’s so brilliant about it is he (Stephen King) basically wrote a treatise on social isolation and what it means to be marginalized,” she stated. “What are the repercussions? What are the costs for the person who has been ostracized? And for the rest of us who has done it?”

“Kids are waiting for social cues, like, if you’re different and everybody thinks you are different, ‘Well, I want to be with people who are the same.’ It takes a lot of bravery to include someone. The worse thing you can do to someone is to exclude him. We are social people. If we came to this room and there was somebody sitting in the corner and you guys won’t let him sit in the table, as adults, we would be horrified, absolutely horrified! But kids don’t know that yet, they are just learning it. It has to be something that’s taught.”

 She also explained to us what inspired the author to write Carrie.

 â€œThere were two girls that he went to high school with,” she said. “One was extremely marginalized by poverty and the other one by her family’s extreme religious beliefs. They were both shunned; no one paid attention to them. They didn’t live very long. They both died in their early 20s of different causes and he looks back on that period with a sense of shame. ‘Why didn’t I do something? Why did all of us let that happen?’”

This writer must disclose that we did not spend the entire 20 minutes talking about serious stuff. Our roundtable interview had some moments of levity, too, and it came courtesy of the journalist from Turkey who was covering the junket for a travel magazine. When she finally got an opportunity to ask a question she excused herself, disclosed that she was writing for a travel magazine and she only wanted to ask Julianne if she has been to Turkey. Luckily for her, Julianne has been to Turkey. So for the next two minutes, Julianne talked about Turkey and her favorite Turkish food. She did not ignore the question nor insisted that we keep the interview on the movie. She did not take any exception to the journalist. She accommodated everyone.

Carrie is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) and opens today in theaters nationwide.