Demi Moore on Feeling Confident Now Versus When She Was Younger: ‘I Was Torturing Myself’

It’s no wonder Demi Moore was nominated for an Oscar for The Substance. She basically lived it. The good news is that, unlike her character in the film, Moore has learned how to have a healthy relationship with her aging body, after years of tormenting herself to look a certain way.

For the cover of People magazine’s “World’s Most Beautiful” issue, Moore said there’s an aspect of The Substance that “we all have experienced.” The tendency to compare ourselves to others and judge ourselves too harshly. For instance, Moore talked about some of the extreme lengths she went to in order to maintain a certain body shape.

“I did torture myself. Crazy things like biking from Malibu all the way to Paramount, which is about 26 miles. All because I placed so much value on what my outsides looked like. I think the biggest difference today is it’s so much more about my overall health and longevity and quality of life,” Moore told the magazine. “I think I’ve evolved into greater gentility toward myself. I was so harsh and had a much more antagonistic relationship with my body. And straight up I was really just punishing myself.”

Now, she said, she has a more “intuitive, relaxed” relationship with her body. “When I was younger, I felt like my body was betraying me. And so I just tried to control it. And now I don’t operate from that place. It’s a much more aligned relationship.” That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still sometimes feel insecure, Moore explained. But, she said, “I can accept that that’s where I’m at today, and I know the difference today is that it doesn’t define my value or who I am.”

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In fact, Demi Moore is kind of the queen of confidence these days. After winning the Best Actress Golden Globe for The Substance, Moore said in her moving acceptance speech, “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…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.’ And so today, I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me and for the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong.”