Biography, Filmography And Pictures:

The daughter of a career military father, and a Scottish social worker mother, Julianne Moore was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on December 3, 1960. Because of her military upbringing, she spent her early life living in over twenty-five different locations around the world before finally enrolling at Boston University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in acting from the School of the Performing Arts. After graduation in 1983, she relocated to New York and started her show business career in theater.

Wanting more then just a theater career, Moore began auditioning for television and movie roles, and was soon hired in a run of television soap operas and mini-series including "The Edge of Night", "I'll Take Manhattan" with Valerie Bertinelli and Tim Daly, "As the World Turns", "Money, Power, Murder" with Blythe Danner, "B.L. Stryker" with Burt Reynolds, "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie" with Matthew Lawrence, Christian Slater and Steve Buscemi. 

She got her first feature film role in the horror thriller movie "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle" (1992), about a women who seems to be the perfect nanny, but secretly is out to wreck the lives of the family she is supposed to be helping. A supporting role followed in the comedy mystery "The Gun In Betty Lou's Handbag" (1992), about an ignored, small-town librarian who confesses to a murder she didn't commit to get attention. Her Hollywood career was starting to pick up steam, and the actress started grabbing the attention of movie producers and critics. 

Another high-profile supporting role came in the portrayal of Sharon, in the romantic "Body Of Evidence" (1993), starring Madonna and Joe Mantegna, where a woman is accused of killing a man to inherit his millions of dollars by having sex with him. The film was panned by critics, and audiences stayed away from the theater, but the exposure shot the actress into the status of Hollywood movie star, and the job offers started rolling in.

She got a lucky break in 1993 when she co-starred with Johnny Depp in the dramatic comedy romance "Benny & Joon" (1993), about a mentally ill young woman who finds her love in an eccentric man who models himself after Buster Keaton. The movie was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a MTV Movie Award. But her biggest break came opposite Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in the crime thriller "The Fugitive" (1993), where wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, Dr. Richard Kimble escapes from a prison bus and tries to find out why she was killed and who the murderer really was. The film won rave reviews and earned an Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony, and was nominated for a Golden Globe, BAFTA, and a MTV Movie Award. 

She then wrapped her year in the little seen drama "Short Cuts" (1993), where the everyday lives of a number of Los Angeles residents are the subject of this collection of short stories. She grabbed a bit of tabloid attention with her nude shower scene in the film.

She was then cast in her first starring lead role as Carol White in the thriller "Safe" (1995), about a women who begins to develop an environmental illness to everything around her, and leaves her husband and children to join a retreat in the search for a cure. For her work, she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. 

She then starred opposite Hugh Grant in the comedy "Nine Months" (1995), where a commitment-phobe (Grant) finds out his longtime girlfriend is pregnant and realizes he might have to change his lifestyle for better or much, much worse. The onscreen chemistry between Moore and Grant was noted by critics as exceptional, and the film was nominated for an American Comedy Award.

She then appeared in a string of high profile roles in A-list movies including an electronics expert targeted for death in "Assassins" (1995), and as the artist's mistress Dora Maar in "Surviving Picasso" (1996), then as the moody daughter of a highly dysfunctional family in the independent film "The Myth of Fingerprints" (1997). Her big role for the year was as a paleontologist chasing dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's "The Lost World: Jurassic Park", where a research team is sent to the Jurassic Park Site "B" island to study the dinosaurs there while another team approaches with another agenda. She wrapped the year, and picked up a well deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, as a drug addicted porn star who plays mother to the low-budget film crew in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights.”

After time away from movie making to have a baby, the now A-list celebrity teamed with the Coen brothers for comedy "The Big Lebowski" (1998) to play the daughter of an aging millionaire, an artist who puts paint on her body and then throws herself at the canvas, but two thugs urinate on the rug to coerce him into paying a debt he knows nothing about. She then took the role of Lila Crane in the unnecessary remake of the color enhanced version of Hitchcock's 1960 classic thriller "Psycho.” 

She started off a busy 1999 with the first of five feature film roles as an unconventional Southerner in Robert Altman's "Cookie's Fortune", starring with Glenn Close and Liv Tyler, where conflict arises in the small town of Holly Springs when an old woman's death causes a variety of reactions among family and friends. 

Next was the period drama where she spoke in a perfect British accent to portray a scheming woman, not above blackmail, in Oliver Parker's film on the Oscar Wilde play "An Ideal Husband", starring Cate Blanchett. Julianne was then cast in an Oscar-nominated role as an adulterous wife in the WWII war drama "The End of the Affair”. 

She wrapped her year as the devout mother whose young child dies while in the care of her best friend in "A Map of the World" starring Sigourney Weaver, and finally a starring role as the drug abusing wife of a dying television executive who comes to realize she has fallen in love with her husband in the dramatic "Magnolia.”

Moore's career then hit a bumpy patch starting in 2001, when the actress took over the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling from Jodie Foster, in the crime thriller "Hannibal” starring with Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman and Ray Liotta. Her role, however, did little to boost her status and the film was not well received by audiences or critics. She followed with another poor choice in films when she took a supporting role in the Tim Meadows comedy "The Ladies Man" (2001), where the Saturday Night Life star turns one of his characters into a bad movie. The film was a disaster at the box office, and did nothing to help her earn respect as a leading Hollywood actress. 

Another flop followed with the unsuccessful "Evolution" (2001), a sci-fi comedy co-starring David Duchovny, about a firefighting cadet, two college professors, and a sexy government scientist who work against an alien organism that has been rapidly evolving ever since its arrival on Earth inside a meteor.

Since her career was modeled on skillful acting more than box office expectations, the actress continued to crank out a constant stream of dramatic films throughout 2002, including the well regarded role of Cathy Whitaker, a suburban housewife who finds her perfect life swiftly disappearing in the drama "Far From Heaven" (2002), a film set in 1950s Connecticut, where a housewife faces a marital crisis when she learns her husband (Dennis Quaid) is secretly homosexual, and mounting racial tensions in the outside world. 

She then took a starring role next to Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep, in "The Hours" (2002), the story of how the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" affects three generations of women, all of whom, in one way or another, have had to deal with suicide in their lives. She earned an Oscar Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and the film drew an Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Music and Best Writing. In all, the film won over thirty awards and was nominated for sixty-seven. Her slump was over, and she was once again regarded as an A-list Hollywood celebrity.

After her remarkable success in dramatic roles, Moore tried her skills at romantic comedy again in "Laws of Attraction" (2004), working opposite Pierce Brosnan, where the two portrayed opposing divorce lawyers who, notwithstanding their bitter courtroom relationship, wake up to discover they have gotten married after a drunken romantic evening. Her next starring role was in the thriller "The Forgotten" (2004), cast as a woman who is told that her children never existed, and she and her husband soon discover that there's a much bigger enemy at work. She then portrayed another 1950’s housewife in “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” (2005), starring with Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern, a true-life story of Evelyn Ryan, who in order to support her ten children, enters a commercial jingle-writing contest to try and win money.

The actress then starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson in the crime thriller "Freedomland" (2006), where a black police detective must solve a strange case of a kidnapped boy and deal with a large racial protest. She started out the following year working with Nicolas Cage and Jessica Biel in the sci-fi fantasy thriller "Next" (2007), about a Las Vegas magician who can see into the future, and is pursued by FBI agents seeking to use his abilities to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack. A starring role followed in the bizarre "Savage Grace" (2007), a adaptation of the shocking Barbara Daly Baekeland murder case that happened in a posh London apartment on Friday, November 17, 1972. The bloody and brutal crime caused an uproar on both sides of the Atlantic and remains one of the most unforgettable American Tragedies. 

A dramatic musical drama followed for the actress in "I'm Not There" (2007), starring Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, and the late Heath Ledger, in a story that reflects on the life of Bob Dylan, where six characters embody a different aspect of the musician's life and work. Julianne was on a role, and the actress lined up no less than five movie projects for the 2009-2010 film season. 

First was a role in the dramatic "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship" (2008), about a nanny hired to care for a teenage girl who falls in love with her ailing father. Next was the starring role in the horror thriller "Shelter" (2009), followed by "The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee" (2009), starring with Blake Lively, Keanu Reeves, and Winona Ryder, where after her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.  She followed with the dramatic "Morgan's Summit" starring with Bruce Willis, about a late night radio host who promotes the power of kindness, and changes his ways after a brutal crime affects his life and his thoughts turn to vengeance.

She wrapped her busy year next to Tom Hanks in the western "Boone's Lick" (2009), a story that revolves around a headstrong woman who drags her family on a rickety wagon from Boone's Lick, Mo., to the Wyoming fort where her husband lives. She plays the woman and Hanks plays her husband's brother, who escorts the woman, her four children and her father on the trek and falls in love with her during the perilous journey.

Watch Julianne Moore On "The David Letterman Show" 

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