Of all the places I might have expected to have a spiritual experience, Demi Moore’s virtual meeting room wasn’t one of them. Far from the sorts of locations where my epiphanies typically occur (the back of an Uber at midnight, in the air over Heathrow, lying awake at 3am), it was just Moore, me and a healthy Wi-Fi connection. But before that, on the announcement of her new Kérastase global brand ambassadorship, our conversation naturally began with her hip-length hair.
“There’s a beautiful Native American Indigenous idea that our hair is like our prayers, and the longer it grows, the more it returns to the earth, so those prayers may manifest,” she tells me, explaining that, following years of experimentation, she settled on not wanting her hair to be anything other than what it is naturally.
“After my head was shaved [in 1997, for her starring role in Ridley Scott’s GI Jane], I had the feeling of ‘now what?’ I’d had a pixie cut, I’d had a bob, I’d gone blonde, I’d been red, I’d had layers, I had bangs—I’d done so many things and I wanted to just let it grow.” From then on, she says, letting it grow long—to the floor, full of prayers, energy and history—is what felt most aligned to the person she was becoming.
Asked to reflect on her buzz cut days, Moore says she felt more naked than any of the times she appeared in nude scenes. “I didn’t have [hair] to play with or to hide with,” she recalls, “but it was a beautiful part of becoming more comfortable with myself, and shedding the need to make myself into something [else]. ”
This meditative outlook radiates from Moore, who is in fact, I learn, on a 245-day meditation streak when we speak. The daily practice has made a huge difference to her life, she says. Beyond that, the things keeping Moore tethered include a group chat (her “sisterhood”), where the members share three things daily they’re grateful for, three things they fear or find challenging, and an affirmation or attribute they wish to possess. “We’re a communal species—our nature is to want to share,” she explains, when I ask how this text chain of positivity came into being. Being held accountable is important to Moore and this method is a way of “allowing yourself to be seen and to know you’re not alone.” Mostly, she says, it’s a reminder that we, as human beings, are more alike than we are different.
Finding connection is Moore’s MO. Whether it’s with her family (they’ve just established a family reading club that I’d quite like to join), or in her work (Moore describes being shot by Inez Vinoodh for the Kérastase campaign as a “freeing, liberated” experience), there’s something in her that compels her to find the common ground. Or at least, something basic to share. More than that, she’s comfortable in her own skin. “I love that I experimented when I was younger and it’s something I encourage in other people, but, at a certain point, I got to what I felt was most comfortable, most at ease and most a reflection of me, and it was something quite simple,” she says, beaming into the camera.
This story was originally published on British Vogue.
