Demi Moore Recalls Being Body Shamed by a Director, and Was Told That She Looked ‘Like a Man’

In Demi Moore’s memoir, she opens up about her life-long battle with body image issues. After spending so many years under the spotlight, she has faced a lot of criticism over the years regarding her weight. Moore was either told that she looked too thin or too big. This constant commentary on her body caused the actor to place all her worth on her exterior. And at one point, she even had a well-known director tell her that she looked “like a man.”    

Demi Moore recalls the first moment she was shamed for her weight

In Moore’s memoir, she recalls the first comment by a director that led her to obsess over her body image. Early on in her career, she had given up cigarettes, which ultimately caused her to gain a healthy amount of weight. Yet, unfortunately, one of her directors didn’t see it that way. 

“You are really who I would like to do this film,” said Ed Zwick, the director of One Crazy Summer. “But you would have to promise me that you would lose weight.” 

This caused Moore to feel mortified. She writes, “I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live. I felt a combination of sick, pit-of-my-stomach mortification, and raw panic. And so began my process of trying to dominate and control my body- and of equating my worth to my weight, my size, my exterior.” 

Demi Moore was told by director Adrian Lyne that she ‘looked like a man’

While working on the film titled Indecent Proposal, Moore was body-shamed by director Adrian Lyne. He said that if she didn’t put on more weight, he was going to fire her.  

“I was on display again, and all I could think about was my body, my body, my body,” she reveals. “I doubled down on my already over-the-top exercise routine.”

She continues, saying, “I was actually feeling comfortable with how I looked when I went in to see Adrian about a month later to talk about costumes. I finally had my body where I wanted it.”

“‘You’ve lost a lot of weight,’ Adrian said immediately when I walked in for our meeting.”

“Initially, I took it as a compliment, and I explained that I didn’t want to feel self-conscious,” she writes, “so I’ve been working hard on my body. I don’t think he listened to a word I was saying. He just kept looking at me with a disturbed expression on his face. Finally, he spat, “I don’t want you looking like a f*cking man!” 

She then recalls her agent telling her that “Adrian is going to fire you if you don’t gain at least 10 pounds.” 

There was tension between Demi Moore and Adrian Lyne following his rude comment

Moore explains how his disrespectful comment about her body led to some tension between the two while filming. The actor explains her predicament, where she wanted to please him, but she also wanted to control her own body. 

“On the one hand, it was my body,” she writes. “On the other, it was his film. There was a little bit of tension and antagonism between us after that- I didn’t want him to win, but I knew that a seed had been planted and that it was only a matter of time before my need to please was going to do battle with my desire to be thin.”