Actress Demi Moore has opened up candidly about the menial jobs she worked before her breakthrough. The mom of three spoke recently about having a desire to be independent and away from her mother. "There was a real drive to be self-sufficient. I was already working regular jobs to do that," she shared in an interview with The Substance co-star Margaret Qualley for Glamour, after being named their 2025 Woman of the Year. "My first job was working at a collection agency where I was on the phone," she said. "So I had to call people who hadn’t paid their bills. And because I had such a low deep voice, they didn’t know that I was, like, 14 years old," she added.
The Golden Globe-winning star also revealed that she moved out of home at 16, too. "I didn’t do the typical [thing], which was working in a restaurant. Mine were office-oriented jobs," she continued. "I worked for an accountant. I was a receptionist at 20th Century Fox for a producer who worked for Aaron Spelling. It was being in the [Hollywood] world but not in the world, very humbling. Being able to watch it from an objective point of view and going, 'This isn’t where I’m going to stay.' I had much bigger designs."
The actress also revealed how she has remained so tenacious over the years, saying: "If something didn’t go exactly as I’d like or wasn’t what I had hoped for, [I now know,] 'Yeah, that was a disappointment, but I’m not a disappointment,'" she said. "That’s a huge difference."
© WWD via Getty ImagesShe also spoke frankly about her career going forward, and how she still feels she has a lot more to give. "I think the thing is, I feel in some ways so much more energized right now. And from a place that’s so much more whole that it feels really exciting to really open the lens of possibility. I don’t know what that looks like."
The star also shared who she finds inspiration from, saying: "I look at someone like Helen Mirren and I think, Oh my God, she’s in her 80s. And look at how dynamic - and the work that she’s doing, the diversity of the work she’s doing. And it says to me, Oh we’ve still got a lot to do."
© GettyIn her acceptance speech for her Golden Globe for Best Actress for The Substance in January 2025, Demi had a powerful message about her decades spent in Hollywood, about being enough after being dubbed a "popcorn actress".
© WireImage"In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, successful enough or basically just not enough … you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick," the Charlie's Angels actress told the audience.
