Demi Moore is recalling the early days of working with Tom Cruise on A Few Good Men while she was nearly eight months pregnant.
While speaking on Saturday, October 25, during a Q&A at the New Yorker Festival, Moore, 62, recalled reading lines for the film with costar Cruise, now 63, and director Rob Reiner.
“I think Tom was quite embarrassed,” Moore shared. “I actually felt OK about it. I was moving around, though, right? But I could tell he felt that it was a bit awkward.”
Moore was pregnant at the time with her and ex-husband Bruce Willis’ daughter Scout, now 34. She speculated that Cruise may have been uncomfortable since it was uncommon for one of their peers to have children at the time, explaining that there was pressure to choose between having a career or being a mother — but never both.
“It’s one of the many things, for me, that I just felt didn’t make sense. And so I challenged that to say, you know, ‘Why not? Why can’t you have both?’” she said. “But with that, I think, came a lot of pressure I put on myself to, in a sense, prove that it was possible.”
Us Weekly reached out to Cruise’s rep for comment.
Moore shared that she became “a bit of an overachievement” to prove she could balance both her role as a parent and an actor.
“I look back at that time now, and I go, ‘What the f*** was I thinking?’ And what was I even trying to prove? But it wasn’t as supported as it is today,” the star said. “You know, to be breastfeeding and then blocking and rehearsing a scene.”
Moore, who shared that the next generation will not have to “strive for as much” since motherhood is now “supported” in Hollywood, recalled feeling like she had to be physically fit for the film before the arrival of Scout.
“I was going to be in a military uniform, and probably overly anticipated and started working out and trying to get in shape even before she was born,” Moore said. “I did a two-and-a-half-hour hike the day my water broke. I did a 24-mile bike ride, and then was dancing at a reggae club — hence why she came two-and-a-half weeks early.”
Alongside Scout, Moore shares daughters Rumer, 37, and Tallulah, 31, with Willis. (The actor is also dad to daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, whom he shares with wife Emma Heming Willis.)
Since sharing Willis’ diagnosis with aphasia in 2022, Moore has been candid about supporting her ex-husband as he battles the rare form of dementia.
“It’s so important just to meet them where they’re at. Don’t have a particular expectation of them needing to be who they were or who you want them to be,” Moore said during a September podcast appearance. “When you do that, I find that there is an incredible sweetness and something that’s soft and tender and loving. Perhaps it is more playful and child-like in a certain sense because of how much more caretaking they need.”
