Julianne Moore was born on December 3, 1960, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The daughter of a social psychiatrist and a military judge, young Julianne lived the nomadic lifestyle that often characterizes army families, and called nearly two dozen places home throughout her formative years.
Abrupt moves between such distinct locales as Panama, Germany and Alaska made for a childhood of perpetual transition, but one static element in Julianne Moore's life was her passion for acting. A love of reading instilled in her a sense of fiction, and being raised by a psychiatrist and a judge gave her a window into the world of emotional drama. Theater clubs and school productions were a constant for Julianne, regardless of location, and by the time she graduated from high school, she had settled upon pursuing an acting career.
Her parents initially balked at the notion of her entering the insecure acting job market, but a compromise was reached whereby she would attend university, majoring in drama but benefiting from a well-rounded education. By 1983, Julianne Moore had fulfilled her part of the bargain, receiving her B.F.A. from Boston University's School of the Performing Arts. Still intent on becoming a professional actor, Julianne Moore moved to New York City to seek work. It didn't take her long to find it, and she was soon appearing in a number of off-Broadway theater productions.
In 1984, Julianne Moore landed her first television gig on the series The Edge of the Night, and shortly thereafter won a regular role on the daytime soap As the World Turns, which proved to be a turning point in the careers of fellow thespians like Martin Sheen, Courteney Cox and Lauryn Hill -- and the case was no different for Julianne Moore. In 1988, she was awarded a Daytime Emmy for her work on As the World Turns, and her visibility as an actor was upped considerably.
After a three-year stint, Julianne Moore left the soap opera world, seeking to extend her resume to the big screen. Her first few movie roles -- in Slaughterhouse II (1988), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) and the Madonna vehicle Body of Evidence (1992) -- were forgettable. A bit role in the 1992 thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle garnered Julianne Moore some attention, but it wasn't until the next year that she really broke out on the big screen with two significant performances.
In spite of the opportunity for career blunders that taking on such a large number of roles invited, Julianne Moore's performances and the films that framed them were often critically acclaimed. In 1994, Julianne Moore received the Boston Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress for her work in Vanya on 42nd Street. Her rendition of the character Amber Waves in 1997's Boogie Nights won her Supporting Actress awards from both the Los Angeles and the National Film Critics' Associations, as well as a Golden Satellite Award and an Academy Award nomination.
Also in 1997, while working on the film The Myth of Fingerprints, Julianne Moore began seeing writer-director Bart Freundlich. Soon thereafter, over the course of 37 hours of labor that spanned Julianne's birthday, she gave birth to the couple's first child, Cal.
In 1999, she was rewarded with the National Board of Review's Best Supporting Actress Award for her parts in Magnolia, An Ideal Husband and A Map of the World. She received a second Oscar nomination for 1999's The End of the Affair, and garnered further respect for her roles in Gus Van Sant's remake of the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho (1998), Hannibal (2001) and The Shipping News (2001). She also showed her comedic versatility in a cameo in The Ladies Man (2000) and the ill-fated Evolution (2001).
In 2002, Julianne Moore appeared in Far from Heaven and The Hours with Nicole Kidman. She also welcomed her daughter, Liv Helen, into the world.
In 2005, she added The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio and Trust the Man to her resume. The projects she lined up through 2006 included Children of Men and Freedomland.
