50 facts you missed about Julianne Moore: an actress who writes children’s books

Learn 50 things about actress Julianne Moore who is also a children's author.

1. Julianne Moore was born Julie Anne Smith on December 3, 1960. She is an American actress and children's author.

2. Prolific in cinema since the early 1990s, Moore is active in both art house and Hollywood films.

3. Julianne Moore is particularly known for her portrayals of emotionally troubled women, and has received many accolades including the Academy Award for Best Actress.

4. After studying theatre at Boston University, Moore began her career with a series of television roles.

5. From 1985 to 1988, she was a regular in the soap opera As the World Turns, earning a Daytime Emmy for her performance.

6. Her film debut was in 1990's Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, and she continued to play small roles for the next four years - including in the thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992).

7. Julianne Moore first received critical attention with Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), and successive performances in Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and Safe (1995) continued this acclaim.

8. Starring roles in the blockbusters Nine Months (1995) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) established her as a leading actress in Hollywood, although she continued to take supporting roles.

9. Julianne Moore received considerable recognition in the late 1990s and early 2000s, earning Oscar nominations for Boogie Nights (1997), The End of the Affair (1999), Far from Heaven (2002; winning the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival), and The Hours (2002; winning the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival).

10. Julianne Moore won a Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sarah Palin in the television film Game Change.

11. The year 2014 was key for Moore, as she joined the popular Hunger Games series, was named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Maps to the Stars.

12. Julianne Moore won an Oscar for her role as an Alzheimer's patient in Still Alice.

13. In addition to acting, Moore has written a series of children's books about the character "Freckleface Strawberry".

14. Julianne Moore is married to the director Bart Freundlich.

15. The couple has two children.

16. Julianne Moore was born at the Fort Bragg army installation in North Carolina.

17. Her father, Peter Moore Smith, was a paratrooper in the United States Army, who later attained the rank of colonel and became a military judge.

18. Her mother, Anne (née Love; 1940-2009), was a psychologist and social worker from Greenock, Scotland, who emigrated to the United States as a child in 1950.

19. Has a younger sister, Valerie, and a younger brother, the novelist Peter Moore Smith.

20. Julianne Moore considers herself half Scottish and claimed British citizenship in 2011 to honor her deceased mother.

21. She also has Irish and English ancestry.

22. Julianne Moore frequently moved around the United States as a child, due to her father's occupation.

23. She was close to her family as a result, but has said she never had the feeling of coming from one particular place. The family lived in multiple locations, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Panama, Nebraska, Alaska, New York, and Virginia, and Moore attended nine different schools.

24. The constant relocating made her an insecure child, and she struggled to establish friendships.

25. Despite these difficulties, Moore later remarked that an itinerant lifestyle was beneficial to her future career: "When you move around a lot, you learn that behavior is mutable. I would change, depending on where I was ... It teaches you to watch, to reinvent, that character can change."

26. She was clever and studious, a self-proclaimed "good girl", and she planned to become a doctor.

27. Julianne Moore had never considered performing, or even attended the theatre, but she was an avid reader and it was this hobby that led her to begin acting at the school.

28. She appeared in several plays, including Tartuffe and Medea, and with the encouragement of her English teacher she chose to pursue a theatrical career.

29. Moore's parents supported her decision, but asked that she train at university to provide the added security of a college degree.

30. Julianne Moore was accepted to Boston University and graduated with a BFA in Theatre in 1983.

31. Julianne Moore moved to New York City after graduating, and worked as a waitress.

32. After registering a stage name with Actors' Equity, she began her career in 1983 with off-Broadway theatre.

33. Her first screen role came in 1984, in an episode of the soap opera The Edge of Night.

34. Her break came the following year, when she joined the cast of As the World Turns. Playing the dual roles of half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes, the intensive work provided an important learning experience for Moore, who looks back on the job fondly: "I gained confidence and learned to take responsibility", she has said.

35. Moore appeared on the show until 1988, when she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Ingenue in a Drama Series.

36. Once she had finished on the soap opera, she turned to the stage to play Ophelia in a Guthrie Theater production of Hamlet opposite Željko Ivanek.

37. The actress sporadically returned to television over the next three years, appearing in the TV movies Money, Power, Murder (1989), The Last to Go (1991), and Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).

38. Actor and stage director John Gould Rubin was Moore's first husband, whom she met in 1984 and married two years later. They separated in 1993, and their divorce was finalized in August 1995.

39. Moore began a relationship with Bart Freundlich, her director on The Myth of Fingerprints, in 1996. The couple have a son, Caleb (born December 1997) and a daughter, Liv (born April 2002). They wed in August 2003 and live in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City.

40. Alongside her acting work, Moore has established a career as a children's author. Her first book, Freckleface Strawberry, was published in October 2007 and became a New York Times Best Seller.

41. Moore decided to write the book when her young son began disliking aspects of his appearance; she was reminded of her own childhood, when she was teased for having freckles and called "Freckleface Strawberry" by other children.

42. Julianne Moore has written two follow-up books in the series: Freckleface Strawberry and the Dodgeball Bully was published in 2009, and Freckleface Strawberry: Best Friends Forever in 2011. Both carry the message that children can overcome their own problems.

43. Freckleface Strawberry has been adapted into a musical, written by Rose Caiola and Gary Kupper, which premiered at the New World Stages, New York, in October 2010.

44. Moore had an input in the production, particularly through requesting that it retain the book's young target audience. The show has since been licensed and performed at several venues, which she calls "extremely gratifying and extremely flattering".

45. Moore's fourth children's book was released in September 2013, separate from the Freckleface Strawberry series. Titled My Mom is a Foreigner, But Not to Me, it is based on her experiences of growing up with a mother from another country.

46. In November 2013, Moore signed a five-book deal with Random House publishers.

47. As of the start of 2015, Moore has appeared in 61 films, four television movies, and four television series. Her most acclaimed films, according to review-aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, include Short Cuts (1993), Children of Men (2006), The Kids Are All Right (2010), Boogie Nights (1997), Far from Heaven (2002), Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), What Maisie Knew (2012), Still Alice (2014), Safe (1995), A Single Man (2009), and Magnolia (2000).

48. Julianne Moore has received five Academy Award nominations, eight Golden Globe nominations, seven SAG nominations, and four BAFTA nominations. From these, she has won an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and two SAG Awards.

49. She also has a Primetime Emmy and a Daytime Emmy.

50. In addition, she has been named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival - the fourth person, and second female, in history to achieve this.

Source: Wikipedia.org