Demi Moore said during an interview at The New Yorker Festival (via People) that she felt Tom Cruise was “quite embarrassed” by her pregnancy when they were rehearsing together for 1992’s “A Few Good Men,” Rob Reiner’s film adaptation of Aaron Sorkin’s play about two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of another soldier. Moore was eight months pregnant with her second child, Scout Willis, when she started rehearsing lines with Cruise and Reiner ahead of production.
“I think Tom was quite embarrassed,” Moore said. “I actually felt okay about it. I was moving around, though, right? But I could tell he felt that it was a bit awkward.”
As reported by People: “Moore 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,” Moore said about the stigma around moms in Hollywood. “And so I challenged that to say, you know, ‘Why not? Why can’t you have both?’ But with that, I think, came a lot of pressure I put on myself to, in a sense, prove that it was possible.”
Moore said she became “a bit of an overachiever” in this regard, adding: “I look back at that time now, and I go, ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’ And what was I even trying to prove? But it wasn’t as supported as it is today. You know, to be breastfeeding and then blocking and rehearsing a scene.”
After giving birth to her daughter, Moore then applied additional pressure on herself to get in shape for the movie. She explained: “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. 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.”
Moore noted that mothers are much more “supported” on Hollywood film sets nowadays — a needed course correction for the industry. Variety has reached out to Cruise’s representative for comment.
