Tom Ford on His Friendship (and Upcoming Collaboration) With Julianne Moore

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Julianne Moore has at least one new movie coming out this year. Maybe more. There’s The Debut, the latest film from writer and director Jesse Eisenberg, in which she plays a New Jersey housewife named Mona who auditions for a part in a fictional musical managed by an intense and enigmatic director (Paul Giamatti). Then there’s Tom Ford’s much-anticipated third feature film, Cry to Heaven, based on the 1982 Anne Rice novel of the same name about an 18th-century Venetian castrati. At this point, Cry to Heaven probably won’t be out until early 2027, but Harper’s Bazaar, which put Moore on the cover of their October “Obsessions” issue, used the feature as an opportunity to talk to Ford about his relationship with the Oscar-winning actor.

A small part of a much larger profile on Moore, Ford recalls meeting her in the mid-1990s and becoming drawn to her almost instantly. “For me, there have always been three levels of friendship,” he says. “The first is people you would see for lunch, the second is people you would have dinner with, and the third is the person you would vacation with. We jumped past the first two,” he explains. “She is warm and loyal.” On set, their dynamic is similarly simple and easy: “When one casts her, there is little directing that needs to be done,” he says. “She always gives an absolutely stunning performance.”

Elsewhere in the feature, Eisenberg also expressed his admiration for Moore’s prodigious talent: “Julianne has been my favorite actress since I started watching movies about adults,” he says. “I feel so indebted to her, like I should be carrying her on a bed through the desert into an oasis so that she can have water. I’m in awe of her talent.”

Check out pics from Moore’s cover shoot below, along with a few more of our favorite quotes, directly from Moore herself.

Moore on relating to the awkward theater community at the center of The Debut:

“There’s a scene where the actors are all sitting outside, having lunch, and there’s a kind of jovial, collegial quality, but it’s also incredibly cringe because they’re not cool,” Moore says. “We could not stop laughing. We were once that lunch table in middle school; we went to the mall in our costumes after the school play.”

Moore on the intellectual and emotional work of acting:

“I don’t know who someone is unless they’re written. It starts with when I feel like I know the person when it’s on the page,” Moore tells writer Haley Mlotek as they discuss her process. “You think about what somebody says, whether or not they mean what they say, where they live, the narrative they’ve created around themselves, what might be the real narrative.”

Mlotek reports that a therapist once told Moore that if actors had their vitals taken after performing an emotional scene, all the physiological symptoms of real feeling would be there: the elevated heart rate, the labored breathing, the cold sweat. “You’ve hypnotized yourself into it,” she explains. “But the beauty of it is that you can be guided by your intellect. It’s really, really stimulating intellectually and emotionally, and I love that. It’s not real, but it’s your responsibility.”

Moore on the superstitious rituals she shares with her husband, Bart Freundlich:

“She is a superstitious person,” writes Mlotek, “rituals lend themselves well to magical thinking, particularly when it comes to luck. ‘It’s a big joke in my family that my husband and I are like, ‘Well, that sweater is not lucky.’ I think intellectually I understand that it’s not real, but certainly when I was younger I was much more superstitious, because you have a lot riding on life when you’re young. Am I going to get that job? Will they call me back? So you’re like, ‘I don’t know, check the tarot cards.’’ ”

Moore on discovering her visual eye later in life:

“Don’t we all love beautiful things?” she asks Mlotek. “I want things to be beautiful. I always thought that I was a completely verbal person, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized I’m a very visual person.” According to Mlotek, Moore loves interior design and helps people in her life decorate — including her son, who is engaged and getting married this fall. She sends him and his partner links to items she thinks would work in their space, talks to them about the light in the room.

Moore also took time to sit down and peruse some of her past red carpet looks for the publication. Check out the video below.

Check out Moore’s full profile now on HarpersBAZAAR.com and pick up your copy of the Obsessions Issue when it hits newsstands September 29.