Who

Indie film queen Julianne Moore has turned in critically-acclaimed performances in Boogie Nights, Far From Heaven, and The Hours.

Backstory

An Army brat who grew up on various bases in Germany and the U.S., Julie Anne Smith started acting while attending Boston University. She moved to New York in after graduating in 1983, supporting herself as a waitress while performing in off-Broadway plays like Serious Money. In 1985 she landed the part of Frannie Hughes on As the World Turns—she'd later play Frannie's half-sister Sabrina as well—and earned an Emmy for her over-acting on the soap in 1988.

In the 1990s, Moore turned away from soaps and focused on her film career, clinching roles in Hollywood schlock like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The Fugitive as well as in the sort of edgier fare that would become her bread-and-butter, like Benny & Joon and Todd Haynes' Safe. The turning point in Moore's career came in 1997, when she starred as coke-addled porn star Amber Waves in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights and earned an Academy Award for her efforts; breathless critics hailed her utterly transcendent acting—a term that's been applied to almost every role she's had since.

Lately, Moore's been in her "Eisenhower phase," playing a series of put-upon 1950s housewives in Far From Heaven, The Hours, and The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. Between movies she periodically returns to the stage, as in 2006 when she starred in the Sam Mendes-directed The Vertical Hour on Broadway.

Of note

Despite her soap opera origins, Moore has blossomed into the rare celebrity who's a bona fide movie star with unimpeachable indie cred to boot. Long sought after by filmmaking's top auteurs, she's worked repeatedly with certain directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) and Todd Haynes (Safe, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There). But at some point or another she's done a picture for practically every established indie director, including Gus Van Sant (Psycho), the Coen brothers (The Big Lebowski), and Stephen Daldry (The Hours). Moore is sticking with highbrow material for the moment: She's slated to star in adaptations of Portuguese Nobel winner Jose Saramago's allegorical novel Blindness, Larry McMurtry's Boone's Lick, and Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship.

The look

If her carrot-topped kids are any indication, Moore is a natural redhead. Although those who've seen her famous scene in Shortcuts, where she argues with Matthew Modine while naked from the waist down, already know that.

Personal

Moore has been married three times; her first two marriages were to Sundar Chakravarthy from 1983 to 1985 and to producer John Rubin from 1986 to 1995. After dating for seven years and having two children, Caleb and Liv, she and director Bart Freundlich finally tied the knot in 2003. Freundlich later directed her in the 2006 rom-com stinker Trust the Man, which prompted the Times to gripe that she was "poorly served by Mr. Freundlich's unfunny, unfocused screenplay." Here's hoping that he's a better husband than filmmaker.

Habitat

Moore, Freundlich and their kids live in a West 11th Street townhouse which features, rather appropriately, a bright red door. The Moore-Freundlichs sold their previous home on 13th and Hudson for just under $4 million in 2003.