There is a joke doing the rounds about Demi Moore, the highest-paid actress in Hollywood: she shaved her head to play G I Jane in Ridley Scott's new movie because there was nothing else left for her to take off. Moore's fleshfest Striptease is playing at a cinema near you - in fact, it is on at almost every cinema in town (Hong Kong, remember, is the only place outside Italy where the diabolical Showgirls turned a profit). Moore, as has been well-reported, was paid a then-record US$12.5 million (HK$97.5 million) to take her clothes off and star as a stripper in a sleazy Florida bar called the Eager Beaver. There was an immediate howl of protest: the first time an actress comes close to getting the salary of a leading man in Hollywood, and she is being paid to strip. Moore, 33, mother-of-three, muscles positively rippling under a white T-shirt, does not see it that way, of course. 'It was for all women in the industry,' she says. 'It's perpetuating the positive influence women are having in film and therefore more movies will be made with women in the lead. They were willing to pay what they feel is in balance to what I'm bringing to the film, so they could guarantee a certain level of box office success.' The only problem was 'they' (producers Castle Rock) did not get that success. After 11 weeks of play in the United States, Striptease has brought in a weak US$32 million (in the same period of time, John Travolta's critically-panned Phenomenon raked in US$100 million). But the critics did not just pan Striptease - they savaged Moore. USA Today called it a 'mess with breasts; Moore's body is in better shape than her acting'. The Washington Post opined: 'Moore seems to think she's striking a blow for feminism . . . talk about pulling yourself up by your bra straps'. The New York Times decided that Moore's desperate single mum in Striptease 'looks about as helpless as a live grenade'. After a few high-profile flops (her revisionist The Scarlet Letter, where Hester Prynne was transformed into a rampant exhibitionist and The Juror, co-starring Alec Baldwin), the wisdom in Hollywood is that Moore is washed up, unless Scott can make her G I Jane work box-office magic. And she cannot look to her sisters for help; all the above reviews were written by women, and even Julia Roberts, recently paid US$12.5 million to star in My Best Friend's Sister, smirked: 'Whatever I've been paid, it's a lot, and, um, I've got my clothes on.' Why is everyone being so mean to Moore? Was it her sashay across talk show host David Letterman's desk in a G-string that turned her from the successful actress in Ghost, Indecent Proposal and A Few Good Men to what Allure magazine called 'the famously buff mother-of-three despised by unbuff mothers-of-three everywhere'? Did the sexual predator she played opposite Michael Douglas in 1994's Disclosure stick? Was it the two Vanity Fair covers, one shot when she was heavily pregnant? Or could it be that the marriage to mega action star Bruce Willis has now lasted way beyond expectations and produced three children, the oldest of which, Rumer, co-stars in Striptease ? Whatever Moore does, it seems to spell s-e-x. Even when she voiced Esmerelda, the heroine of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the cartoonists were inspired to draw the first Disney heroine with heaving breasts. But she says: 'I think the perception is I have extreme confidence and comfort with my body. The truth is just the opposite. It's my discomfort with my body that has made me want to overcome that. So I've created situations for myself that have challenged me to remove my own self-imposed limitations towards my own body. It's about outside perception and what I feel about myself on the inside; it has been an ongoing effort to change that. 'I actually hope that on the outside I feel good about my body and I think I do look good. But in general, and for a long time, I haven't thought that way. So I pushed myself.' Moore's drive is legendary; Barry Levinson, her director in Disclosure, recalls how she would get up three hours before filming started - whatever the time - to spend two hours on the Stairmaster, take the kids to school, and turn up prepared, focused and on-time. 'You have to admire her,' he says. 'She's worked hard for everything she has.' Her career path would seem to indicate that. Coming from a famously-dysfunctional home (she is estranged from her publicity-seeking mother), she was married by 17, at which point she was also hiding a substance abuse problem, divorced before she was 20, and quickly became engaged again to fellow brat-packer Emilio Estevez. Then she disappeared to marry Willis. When she re-emerged in 1990 with Ghost, nobody had to tell Moore how to capitalise on her new winning streak. Moore thinks the nudity in her career has been overplayed. 'I don't get it,' she says. 'I'm slightly rebellious, yes. But I don't get why people are so uptight. I don't think being nude is such a big deal. Being nude in a photograph is very different from being nude in a film. I also think there is a perception that I've been naked a lot on film and I haven't. When you look at Disclosure and Indecent Proposal I'm not naked at all. The Vanity Fair covers, that's all there is.' She is not totally naked in Striptease, either, retaining a feather-edged G-string throughout. She laughs: 'Maybe people just want to see a body and then maybe they'll find out that it's a movie about a mother and a daughter and money and politics. It's funny. Well, I hope the guys have a good time anyway.' She adds, defiantly: 'Why should I limit myself to being politically correct? A man wouldn't. A man wouldn't even be asked to.' Moore has also consistently denied plastic surgery, claiming the obvious breast-size difference between, say, 1986's About Last Night and this year's Striptease comes down to child-bearing - which does bring a new meaning to the words 'miracle of motherhood'. And if you watch the credits carefully in Striptease, you'll find she had eight assistants, including a personal trainer and a 'motion trainer', a sizeable entourage which led her to be dubbed 'Gimme Moore'. But her body has not always been in such good shape: once, when modelling, a magazine editor told her: 'My, haven't you a healthy body.' It obviously stuck. Striptease, which is not as bad as the critics would suggest - it is certainly no Showgirls - is based on Carl Hiaasen's riotously funny novel of the same name. While much of the humour has been stripped on the way to the big screen, it still has its moments. Moore, as a single mother forced to disrobe to finance a bitter custody battle, conducts some flashy routines, but the main attractions are Burt Reynolds as her most perverted fan and Ving Rhames as the Eager Beaver's security guard. What is surprising is the appearance of seven-year-old Rumer Willis in this den of iniquity. 'She overheard me telling the story of the film to someone and asked me whether she could be in the movie,' says Moore. 'She just kept pushing me to give her a chance even after I told her she would have to audition and that I had no control. 'Out of 90 days shooting, she had 30 days of work, so it's quite an important role. She auditioned with eight other little girls, so how can I not have tremendous pride? 'You know, she saw me do the one number when my top comes off and I said: 'What do you think? How did Mommy do?' And she said: 'Oh, it was very good'. I asked her: 'What was your favourite part?' And she said: 'When the bra comes off.' 'What's interesting when you have kids in relation to this, is that if you don't tell them there is something wrong and allow them just to make their own decision without slanting it, they don't judge it as wrong and negative. They see it as something funny with dancing, pretty costumes. 'I find that in general I have a distaste for the puritanical society in which I have grown up. In Europe obviously there is a different attitude to nudity and one's relationship with the body. But in America it's like a criminal act. As if I would run out and jump on someone if I saw a naked body.' Moore researched her part thoroughly. 'There is such a stigma attached to the kind of person a stripper is. I think people assume they are low-class or rough women who don't have self-esteem. Or that they are drug addicts. 'Having met a lot of these women and spent a lot of time in these clubs, they are not one type of women. I've met mothers. They are all there for different reasons, ultimately it's about money. So they can make some money to live. 'But there are some really nice ladies and I feel protective of them. I don't want to say their job is degrading. 'There are some I've met who actually enjoy it. There are some who hate it and do feel ashamed and uncomfortable and they are just there for the money.' Which is pretty much why Moore is conducting this interview. 'When you go to work, the hope is that you can share your art with people. And obviously the way you can reach people is through journalists and the media,' she says. 'My profession is creative and satisfying for my artistic need but it's still a business and that side sometimes has to be separated and I still have to show up to do this. If I didn't have to, I wouldn't.' But she says it in the nicest possible way; rippling muscles, gravelly voice and those famous piercing green-hazel eyes aside. For Moore, the key word is control. When she is complimented on how good she looks in Striptease, she snaps: 'I'm obviously not going to let them leave in any shots where I look bad. I'm going to get rid of that stuff. 'I'm flawed, just as we all are, because we're human beings. But I'm functioning in a world which is illusion, and I'm going to make sure that there's nothing in there that is not flattering.' Striptease (Edko circuit and the Park, Astor, Ma On Shan and Chinachem cinemas)
