Demi Moore snagged statuettes all through the awards season for her dynamic performance in “The Substance,” a film about the indignities women past 50 face in Hollywood. She was favored by many to win the Oscar for best actress.
But when the envelope was opened on Sunday night Moore, 62, was passed over in favor of Mikey Madison, 25, who pulled an upset and won the best actress trophy for playing a sex worker in the film “Anora.”
While Madison’s performance was widely praised, her unexpected victory left many admirers of Moore puzzled and saddened that it kept her from a perfect ending to her career comeback.
On social media and on a subreddit dedicated to Moore’s upset, some fans suggested that her loss underscored one of the central themes of the film: the challenges older actresses face in a Hollywood that is obsessed with young women.
One commenter noted that the academy had been observed in the past to “like young women and old men.” Another lamented: “Literally pouring all that brilliance on screen only for the younger actress who benefited from sex appeal and social hype to take that prestigious of an award from her.”
Paolo Uggetti posted on social media that “Demi Moore losing to Mikey Madison is basically the plot of ‘The Substance.’” That post has been viewed more than five million times.
Moore had seemed to have momentum in the weeks leading up to Sunday night’s ceremony.
Since the academy diversified its voter rolls in recent years, the best-actress race is no longer seen as favoring young ingénues to the extent it once did. The average age of best-actress winners has been rising, and most of the recent winners in the category have been over 40.
And Moore had been on a roll. She picked up best actress trophies at the Critics Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and, most notably, at the Golden Globes, where she delivered a career-defining speech.
While accepting her Golden Globe, Moore spoke candidly about her career struggles, including being dismissed as a “popcorn actress.” She said that when she had received the “absolutely bonkers” script for “The Substance,” in which she plays an aging star turned fitness instructor who goes to extreme lengths to regain her youth, she was at a low point in her career, thinking she was done.
“One thing that I think this movie is imparting is 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,” she said in the speech. “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.’”
Several Oscars prognosticators had predicted that she would win the Academy Award for best actress, too, including Scott Feinberg, the executive editor of awards at The Hollywood Reporter, and Clayton Davis, the chief awards editor at Variety. (Kyle Buchanan, the awards season columnist for The New York Times, had a different take, describing the races as a tossup but predicting that Fernanda Torres, the Brazilian actress, would win for her role in “I’m Still Here.”)
One disappointed fan on social media said that each of Moore’s acceptance speeches this awards season had been “amazing” and that she would have loved to hear another from her at the Oscars. “Her performance was truly one of a kind, and I’m so happy both she and the film made it this far,” the supporter said. “Just wish she could’ve won.”
One person who appeared to take her loss in stride was Moore herself. At the end of the night her daughter, Tallulah Willis, shared a photo of Moore enjoying a French fry with her dog Pilaf in her arms. “My winner,” Willis, her daughter, wrote in a caption.
