Demi Moore said she "felt flat" following the reaction to her Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle bikini scene.
While speaking with Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh for Interview magazine for a piece published on Tuesday, Moore opened up about Hollywood beauty standards and the chatter surrounding that infamous part of the movie. The actress, now 61, was 40 years old when she filmed the Charlie's Angels sequel in 2003.
"I had done Charlie's Angels, and there was a lot of conversation around this scene in a bikini, and it was all very heightened, a lot of talk about how I looked," Moore said. "And then I found that there didn't seem to be a place for me. I didn't feel like I didn't belong. It's more like I felt that feeling of, I'm not 20, I'm not 30, but I wasn't yet what they perceived as a mother."
She continued: "It was a time that felt, not dead, but flat."
Yeoh, 62, added that "Hollywood is cruel to women of that age," noting: "You don't find the scripts or the characters that resonate with you anymore."
"It's either, you are the mother or you're old enough not to be sexy in their eyes. It's like, why can't a 45-year-old, a 50-year-old, or 60-year-old, be sexy?" the Everything Everywhere All at Once actress asked. "But that whole perception is undergoing a lot of change because people like you and me won't sit back and just take it."
"I don't know if I've ever done that when I've come up against something that I don't understand exists as a limitation," Moore said.
Moore played Madison Lee in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, the main antagonist and former Angel who held sensitive information she planned to sell. In the previously mentioned scene, Moore meets Cameron Diaz's character, Natalie Cook, on a beach while wearing a black string bikini.
Yeoh said Moore has "always been a trailblazer."
"You've pushed the envelope, and that's what we have to continue to do," she told her.
Moore is currently starring in The Substance—a horror/sci-fi film with Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid.
During the interview, Moore said she was "moved" by the script "because it was such a unique way to be exploring this issue of aging, of societal conditioning, of what I also see as the pressure of the male-idealized woman that we as women have bought into."
"At the core of it, what it's really about is what we do to ourselves...," the G.I. Jane star said. "There's great power in knowing that what we do to ourselves is a choice, and we can make a different choice. And for those who aren't looking for such a deep message, it's just entertaining."
The Substance hits theaters on September 20.
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