Julianne Moore Pictures, Biography, Images, Videos, News

Born Dec. 3, 1960 at Fort Bragg, NC, Julianne Moore was raised by her father, Peter, a military judge and colonel in the Army, and her mother, Anne, a psychiatrist and social worker who emigrated from Dunoon, Scotland to the United States. Because of her father’s position, Moore routinely moved throughout her youth, living in some 23 places across America and Germany. After graduating Frankfurt American High School in Frankfurt, Germany in 1979, Moore attended Boston University, where she earned her Bachelor’s in Theater at the School of Fine Arts. In 1983, she graduated and promptly moved to New York City, where she almost immediately made her television debut on the daytime soap opera, “Edge of Night” (ABC/CBS, 1955-1985). She then landed a regular soap opera role on “As the World Turns” (CBS, 1955-2005), playing the dual characters of the good Frannie Hughes and her mysterious, British identical half-sister, Sabrina Hughes. Despite the campy melodramatics such a situation could trigger, Moore nonetheless made both characters realistic and earned a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Ingenue in a Drama Series in 1988. In a few short years, Moore had emerged as a talented actress who was bound to grow exponentially outside the stifling confines of daytime television.

But her moment in the limelight was still a decade off, leading Moore to meticulously carve out a career that consisted of varied roles that eventually helped grabbed the attention of top filmmakers. In the meantime, she left “As the World Turns” to tackle Ophelia in a production of “Hamlet” at the famed Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. She returned to television with the miniseries "I'll Take Manhattan" (CBS, 1987), playing Valerie Bertinelli's best friend. In 1990, she returned to the stage for a workshop production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” Eventually she landed her first feature role, albeit as a coed who becomes the hapless victim of a mummy in the forgettable "Tales From the Darkside: The Movie" (1990). Moore finally made an impact when she played the career-driven real estate agent friend of a new mom (Annabella Sciorra) who meets a horrific, glass-shattering fate in the surprise hit thriller, "The Hand the Rocks the Cradle" (1992). She then attracted notice from none other than Steven Spielberg with a mere three-minute scene as a medical colleague of Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) in "The Fugitive" (1993). She amplified her call for notice by famously delivering a confessional monologue while nude from the waist down in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" (1993).