Demi Moore is everywhere right now, an impressive feat for a legendary actress who stays largely out of the spotlight.
In the (truly wild) horror comedy The Substance, Moore plays an aging celebrity who goes to, let's say extreme, lengths to attempt to recapture her youthful appearance.
It's a story that every working woman in Hollywood can relate to, but especially Moore, who spent her 40s having her age be a constant topic of criticism due to the 15-year age gap she had with her then-husband, Ashton Kutcher.
Ashton and Demi began dating in 2003, after meeting at a dinner party. At the time, Moore was 41 while Kutcher was 25 years old. The pair quickly became an It Couple, they were married in 2005 and divorced in 2013.
Moore was a full-fledged Hollywood icon when they got together, and Kutcher was mostly known for That '70s Show and pranking celebs on Punk'd.
But there was often a tone of judgment around them as a couple. The general vibe was that Moore shouldn't be dating such an eligible Bachelor, especially one over a decade her junior.
'Why would Ashton be… with her?' was a common question.
Reminder: this is Demi-F**king-Moore.
Media speculation around the couple was rife with the sort of age-shaming that is unheard of when famous men date younger women.
Moore was immediately labelled a 'cougar' and no, there isn't a male counterpart for that sexist term.
There's a reason no one raises an eyebrow over the 17-year age gap between George and Amal Clooney, for instance.
But in the '00s, tabloids became obsessed with what plastic surgeries Moore had allegedly done to maintain her good looks, or whether she had completed a 'knee lift' to youthify her legs.
One headline from Daily Mail in 2010 read 'Drop the cougar act Demi. It's time for an old codger in a cardigan.'
The article mocked Moore for the rumours that her husband had been unfaithful. "All that dogged perseverance of keeping young and staying beautiful — and your 33-year-old dolt of a toyboy husband, Ashton Kutcher, still cheats on you with a hot blonde bimbette wearing too much makeup who is young enough to be your daughter," this author actually wrote.
In Australia, it wasn't much better.
In a 2010 issue of Woman's Day, the article read "They say you're only as young as the man you feel, and super cougar Demi Moore didn't look anywhere near her 47 years as she partied like a teenager in a Malibu street last week. And it was her much younger husband, Ashton Kutcher, 32, who ended up looking like an embarrassed parent."
In a 2010 interview, Moore felt the urge to address the 'cougar' jibes, saying she prefers the label "puma."
"Cougar has become so distasteful. I really hate that expression," Moore told Harper's Bazaar.
"[Puma] has a sweeter quality, more elegant. And then somebody said to me, 'Pumas are only for people in their 30s.'"
The same year Moore met her future husband, she made a memorable appearance in the 2003 sequel film Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. But it wasn't her acting chops that gained attention, it was a black bikini, which she was considered 'brave' for wearing at 'her age'.
Again, she was only 41 years old at the time of the film's release.
The critical response is something that the actress still thinks about in 2024. "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 recently told Interview magazine.
After their divorce, Kutcher's career skyrocketed: he was cast in the role of a lifetime, replacing Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men.
In this role, Kutcher became one of the highest-paid actors, earning $700,000 per episode (umm, that's $1.5 million AUD by today's standards), according to Business Insider.
Kutcher would go on to make a career as a charming rom-com lead in No Strings Attached, New Year's Eve and most recently acting opposite Reese Witherspoon in Your Place or Mine.
Meanwhile, Moore's post-divorce film roles became few and far between. Before her critically acclaimed turn in The Substance, she hadn't appeared in any mainstream films which garnered much buzz.
"I found that there didn't seem to be a place for me," Moore told Interview after her Charlie's Angels stint. "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."
If someone was to be deemed the 'winner' of the divorce, it was Kutcher.
The details of Kutcher and Moore's marriage and divorce are something that the public has only slowly discovered over time.
But the warning signs were there from the beginning.
For instance, they released seperate statements to announce their divorce and Moore's carried with it a whole lot of subtext, especially off the back of the cheating allegations against Kutcher.
"It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton," Demi said in a statement to OK!
"As a woman, a mother and a wife, there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life."
It was clear from the jump that Moore wanted to clarify that she was the one who initiated the split and she alluded to some sinister circumstances that led to that decision (more on that later).
Ashton took to his favourite mode of communication at the time, Twitter, to post his own comment on his wife's statement.
"I will forever cherish the time I spent with Demi," he wrote. "Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world and unfortunately sometimes they fail."
Ten years later, Kutcher would use the same language again to describe his divorce. "Nothing makes you feel like a failure like divorce," he told Esquire in 2023.
"Divorce feels like a wholesale f**king failure. You failed at marriage."
So what exactly did this 'failed' marriage look like? The Ghost actress did not paint a pretty picture in her 2019 memoir, Inside Out.
Watch Demi Moore discuss 'losing herself' in a 2019 interview.
When Moore started dating Kutcher, she had been sober for 20 years, but she claims the Jobs actor reintroduced her to alcohol. The actress claimed that he told her "I don't know if alcoholism is a real thing — I think it's all about moderation."
In hindsight, Moore reflected "This is a kid in his 20s who has no idea what he's talking about."
Moore wrote that she had felt like she had to change herself to please her younger husband, writing she "went into contortions to try to fit the mold of the woman he wanted his wife to be."
This included having a threesome, which she has since regretted.
"I put him first," Moore wrote. "So when he expressed his fantasy of bringing a third person into our bed, I didn't say no. I wanted to show him how great and fun I could be."
Afterward, she didn't feel right about what had happened.
"They were good people, but it was still a mistake," she wrote. "I was strangely flooded with shame, I couldn't shake the feeling that this whole thing was somehow my fault."
Moore claims that this threesome had been used against her during Kutcher's alleged infidelity toward the end of their marriage.
"Because we had brought in a third party into our relationship, Ashton said, that blurred the lines and, to some extent, justified what he's done," Moore wrote.
The actress alleged that Kutcher cheated on her twice during their marriage.
For his part, Kutcher has also shared some not-so-nice reflections on his marriage with Moore.
The then 44-year-old actor spoke to Esquire about the pressure of suddenly being a step-father to Moore's three daughters with her second husband Bruce Willis: Rumer, Tallulah, and Scout LaRue.
During their marriage, he said that he "stayed home and took care of the kids" while Moore was working on location.
"I was 26, bearing the responsibility of an eight-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 12-year-old," he said. "That's how some teen parents must experience their twenties."
Kutcher added that he still has relationships with Moore's daughters, but that the whole family dynamic was "a lot".
These days, Kutcher is married to his former That '70s Show co-star, Mila Kunis. The two played on-again, off-again lovers on the sitcom.
They reportedly started dating in 2012 which was before Moore announced she was divorcing Kutcher.
The couple got engaged in 2014, married in 2015, and have welcomed two children together — a daughter Wyatt and son Dimitri.
After the release of his ex-wife's memoir in 2019, Kutcher seemingly responded, posting on Twitter, "I was about to push the button on a really snarky tweet. Then I saw my son, daughter and wife and I deleted it."
Kutcher has admitted that Kunis scolded her now-husband for some of his behaviour in his earlier life. "You were an asshole," he recalled to Esquire.
"Yeah, you were an asshole for a good two years," she told him.
Moore is currently single but she's busier than she's ever been, walking red carpets of glamourous film festivals around the world to promote The Substance and fronting countless photoshoots.
Meanwhile, Kutcher has had a quiet few years for his acting resume, but has been caught up in recent controversies over him and his wife submitting character references for co-star Danny Masterson's trial. The actor was found guilty of raping two women.
The couple has since apologised.
Moore is aware that her groundbreaking role in The Substance is one that carries parallels with her own life, and the struggles she's faced with culture's obsession with women's aging.
"A lot of people believe — as the film [The Substance] says — that a woman's value goes when her fertility ends, and that when your desirability ends, your passion in life ends, too," she recently told The Guardian.
"For so long that was a truth not spoken overtly, but silently. And I'm realising that, actually, that's not true."
Feature image: Getty.