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Demi Moore is recalling working with Tom Cruise on A Few Good Men — and why she thinks the actor may have been “embarrassed” by her pregnancy during preproduction.
Speaking as part of an Oct. 25 Q&A with Jia Tolentino at the New Yorker Festival, the actress, 62, said she was nearly eight months pregnant when she began to read lines for the film alongside director Rob Reiner and costar Cruise, 63.
“I think Tom was quite embarrassed,” Moore — who was pregnant at the time with her second child, Scout Willis — recalled. “I actually felt okay about it. I was moving around, though, right? But I could tell he felt that it was a bit awkward.”
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Moore, also a mom to daughters Rumer Willis and Tallulah Willis with ex-husband Bruce Willis, further explained that she thinks Cruise may have potentially been uncomfortable, given that not many of their Hollywood peers were having children at the time, due to what she said was the pressure to choose between pursuing a career and being a mother.
“It’s one of the many things, for me, that I just felt didn’t make sense. And so I challenged that to say, you know, ‘Why not? Why can’t you have both?’ ” she said. “But with that, I think, came a lot of pressure I put on myself to, in a sense, prove that it was possible.”
PEOPLE reached out to a representative for Cruise for comment.
A Few Good Men, based on Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 play of the same name, follows two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of a fellow Marine.
Moore admitted that she became “a bit of an overachiever” in proving that she could gracefully manage motherhood with an acting career.
“I look back at that time now, and I go, ‘What the f— was I thinking?’ And what was I even trying to prove? But it wasn’t as supported as it is today,” the star said. “You know, to be breastfeeding and then blocking and rehearsing a scene.”
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Explaining that the next generation of actresses won’t have to “strive for as much,” because young mothers in the industry are more “supported,” Moore recalled feeling pressured to get in shape for the film before she even gave birth.
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“I was going to be in a military uniform, and probably overly anticipated and started working out and trying to get in shape even before she was born,” Moore said.
She added, “I did a two-and-a-half-hour hike the day my water broke. I did a 24-mile bike ride, and then was dancing at a reggae club — hence why she came two-and-a-half weeks early.”
During the Q&A, Moore also spoke about her Oscar-nominated role in The Substance.
“The thing that’s moved me the most is, obviously, I knew women of my age would absolutely relate and connect, but it’s the young people that have come up who have seen themselves in this that has moved me the most,” she said.
