At last month’s Toronto International Film Festival, I had the privilege of sitting down with Julianne Moore, who I regard as one of the five or six finest actresses working today, for a wide-ranging conversation about her life, career, and the two movies that she was at the festival to promote.

In Atom Egoyan‘s “Chloe” (Sony, 2010), which is sort of a “Single White Female” for the 21st century, Moore plays a long-married doctor who begins to suspect her husband (Liam Neeson) of philandering. Out of a growing sense of desperation to simply know the truth, she hires a young hooker (23-year-old Amanda Seyfried) to test him. Little does she realize that the hooker is more interested in her than her husband — that is, until one status-update evolves into a torrential lesbian love scene that lasts for a good five minutes and leaves nothing to the imagination! Meanwhile, in Tom Ford‘s “A Single Man” (The Weinstein Company, 12/11), she portrays a bored upper-class housewife whose neighbor, a gay professor (Colin Firth) for whom she has always pined, has just lost his life partner.

Here are a few audio excerpts from our chat, followed by a complete transcript…

• Moore on her big break

• Moore names several actresses she admires

• Moore reveals what scares her — and why she refused to audition for “A League of Their Own”
  

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Interview with Julianne Moore
Conducted/Transcribed by Scott Feinberg
September 14, 2009
Intercontinental Hotel, Toronto

I didn’t go to one of the press screenings [of Chloe]; I saw it last night with everybody else—
Oh, that’s nice! That’s good.

They really seemed to love it…
I didn’t stay.

Oh, you didn’t stay?
No, I didn’t.

Do you have reservations about watching yourself on the big screen?
I don’t like to, certainly not when it’s, you know, a packed house, and a big screen, and stuff like that—it’s no fun. [laughs] But, you know, for me, the best part of the movie is actually making it, is what we do when we’re working, and so once it’s finished my experience has already happened.

Incidentally, before a movie is seen by an audience, do you have a pretty good idea of how it’s going to be received?
No.

I guess it’s still got to be pieced together and a lot can happen…
Yeah. I have no idea, especially these days. I really don’t. You don’t know how something is gonna be—you know, you can have your own opinions about something, and then something can be received one way or another way, you know? But that’s something that you have no control over and it doesn’t always really have to do with the movie itself, you know? You could have a film that’s received really poorly, and a year later people think it’s terrific, and you’re like, “What?!” Or, historically, there have been movies that come out, and do really well, and then people say years later, “That was crap. That was just of its era.” You know? So I don’t know. I think it doesn’t have a whole lot to do except with the time the movie comes out.

Did you go to the movies growing up? And, if so, were there any particular favorites or influences?
I think the thing that was most formative for me— We lived in Alaska for a year, and there wasn’t much to do in the wintertime—it got really cold—and my sister and I were maybe nine and ten or ten and eleven, something like that, and we could take the bus to the movie theater, and we saw whatever was there; it didn’t matter. So we’d see, like, “Escape to Witch Mountain”; or, like, a Cassavetes film called “Minnie and Moskowitz,” I don’t know if you remember that; “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” we saw. We saw whatever was there; it didn’t matter. Later on, when my dad was stationed in Germany, it was the same sort of thing; the movies get changing, so you would just see whatever; it didn’t matter, you just saw it. And I think that was probably—that, and revival houses, you know—those were the most formative film things.

Would you say that was also what made you want to be an actor yourself, or was there another moment or something that happened?
I wanted to be an actor because of books. You know, the films were, kind of, completely outside of me, but I just liked books; I liked reading. And then when I started doing it in school—like, after-school stuff—it felt just like reading aloud; it seemed like I was in the story. So when I started to do it—I went to acting school—it was really all about the theater; I really didn’t know anything about movies. And then, when I was at school in Boston, I saw “Three Women,” the Altman movie, at a revival house, and I didn’t know who that was—I had somehow missed “Nashville” and everything like that [laughs]—and I was like, “Who is this guy?!” I said, “I want to do that!” So that’s—

That’s so interesting because you’ve kind of become one of those ensemble people with the Paul Thomas Anderson movies—”Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia”—
Mm-hmm.

Was that something that you always sought out—roles in big ensemble projects, as well as classic leading lady types?
That’s not what I saw in Bob’s work. What’s interesting about Bob’s work is the kind of incredible— You’ve seen “Three Women,” right?

Mm-hmm…
Is just how psychologically complex it is. And I think all the work that I’ve been drawn to, you know, are things that are about behavior, and about who we are, and the world that we live in. All that stuff has been much more interesting to me than “Lawrence of Arabia”? Do you know what I mean? I like psychological drama.

I guess psychological drama can come in the form of serious dramas like “Far from Heaven” and “The Hours” or in the form of some of the really funny comedies that you’ve done like “The Big Lebowski” that look at weird sides of psychology—
Right.

Are you more comfortable with one sort of genre than the other?
No, uh-uh, not necessarily. I mean, I’ve certainly done less comedy; I wish I’d more. Maybe I’m not that funny, I don’t know. [laughs]

No!
But, you know, I like it all. I like it. I’m just generally drawn to material.

You’re now one of our top, go-to actresses. Was there one film that was sort of “the break” and made that possible?
Well, it’s interesting, Atom and I were talking about this earlier—we both really came of age around the same time, at kind of the dawn of the independent film movement. In the eighties, I had worked primarily on television, and off-off Broadway, and did soap operas, and nighttime TV shows, and some regional theater, and off-Broadway, and all that kind of business, but I wasn’t—there wasn’t any film work I was getting and there wasn’t any film work I particularly even wanted. It was just not a time when—there wasn’t that much stuff. And then independent film happened, and it felt to me as if it happened overnight. I had three movies coming out at one time—there was “Safe,” and “Vanya on 42nd Street,” and “Short Cuts”—and that really changed my career. That was a whole different thing. I went from being, kind of, a— I mean, I literally had a different career; I didn’t even know what was quite happening at the time. And they were all projects that I had done within a year or two of each other, and they were all really exciting and meant a lot to me, but I didn’t know— You know, “Vanya” was a theater project I worked on for five years, you know? It didn’t ever occur to me that it was going to be a movie. And we shot it in ten days, you know? And “Safe” was a really quick, very, very, very, very low budget thing. And then Altman’s thing, of course, was a big deal; you know, that was sort of a dream come true. But that’s what changed my career.

I think a lot of people also very closely associate you with the Oscar-type of movie—
Mm-hmm.

Great stuff, “Far from Heaven” and others that I didn’t mention earlier. Do you have one that you think you’ve been best in? If you were talking to a friend and they asked, “What’s your best performance, in your opinion?”
I don’t know that I do. I don’t know that I do, you know? And I don’t know that I really think about my movies as movies as much as I remember then as how I experienced them while I was doing them. So sometimes how I experienced it on the set—that was most meaningful to me.

I’ve interviewed a number of people who have either acted with or directed you in movies—
Really? [laughs]

Yeah. And looking back at my notes from those, I noticed that there’s one word that seems to recur in all of them when your name came up: “fearless.”
[laughs]

That you’re not afraid to do anything, that you’re willing to do what the part requires even if that means to be emotionally or physically naked—
Right.

Is there anything that you come across in acting that actually is intimidating to you or that you’re not comfortable with?
No, there’s not. But I always say to people, you know, I’m not really afraid of feelings. I’m physically fearful. [laughs] I can’t jump off a diving board. I don’t like having balls thrown in my face. I don’t— You know, the stuff that requires a kind of physicality. Or jumping out of an airplane. Or bungee jumping. Those kinds of things are absolutely terrifying to me and I really wouldn’t do them; I really can’t do them. I mean, I couldn’t ever bungee jump; I’d rather die. So that, to me, seems really scary. But acting is just about feeling, and feelings can’t do anything to you, you know? Feelings can’t kill you, they can’t hurt you; they make you feel, but the other thing about them, too, is that they are transient. You know, even in real-life they always tell you about a feeling, “If you have it, stay with it, and then it’s gonna go through you and pass out the other side.” You know? So I’m actually kind of interested in it. I like extreme; I like emotion; I like, you know, sensation; I like all that. I just don’t like anything physical! [laughs] Just don’t make me play baseball. [laughs]

So we won’t look for you in “The Natural II”…
No, you won’t! [laughs] Well, you want to know something funny? Do you remember that movie—oh, gosh, the baseball movie with all the women!

“A League of Their Own”?
“A League of Their Own.” When I first got to Hollywood—like L.A.—I was auditioning, and everywhere I’d go the women would say, “Have you read for ‘A League of Their Own’?” And I’d say, “I don’t play baseball.” And that happened every single time. And, finally, they were like, “Just try! Just try!” And I’m like, “I can’t play baseball! I can’t do it! I will not be able to do it! It’s not gonna work!” Because there were all these big baseball tryouts, and I was like, “Uh-uh, that’s not gonna work!”

[laughs] That is so funny. Who knew Madonna—
She could play baseball! [laughs]

Apparently…
Yeah!

When you look at your résumé—you have four Oscar nominations, you’ve been a part of numerous movies that are instant-classics, and you have a very strong case as the greatest red-headed actress of all-time—
[laughs] Nice, thank you!

Greer Garson and Maureen O’Hara might complain, but hey…
[laughs]

So if you look at it in those terms, do you feel you have anything left that you need to prove or really want to prove still? Is there an accomplishment that you’re striving for, in particular, or a role that you’d really like to bring to the screen?
I’d like it just to keep going, you know? You think about it a lot because when you’ve been doing something for a certain amount of time you’re like, “Hm, what do I want to do?” And I’m always like, “I want to just keep doing stuff that really interests me.” And, so far, there have always been things that have come up where I’ve thought, like, “Hm, that’s fun, that’s great, that’s interesting, that’s different, that’s—” So it’s never anything in particular, but I do find that I know it when I see the material.

You mentioned going to school in Boston and training as an actor. Do you use an approach that falls under one of these nice little labels like “the Method” or something? I’m always interested to know if an actor can articulate the way he or she tackles a part…
I mean, the interesting thing is that you have all these different teachers, and they have all this different methodology, but at the end of the day you realize that what they’re trying to say to you is that it doesn’t matter what you use as long as it works for you. And I think that, you know, what you do is you take from every single teacher, you know, all the technique, all the method, all the whatever. For me, the most important thing is that I connect with the story somewhere; I have to be excited, and intrigued, and curious, and, like, fascinated, and, like, “Oh, my God! Can you believe they do this thing in the story?!” Then I’m really compelled by it. So it is really about— Stella Adler, actually, of all the teachers who came out of The Group and stuff like that—and I never studied Stella Adler, it was only later—the stuff that she espoused is really kind of a lot of the stuff that I believe in.

Is there anyone whose career trajectory you look at it and would like to emulate?
I don’t know. It’s not like that. I mean, there are actresses that I admire—I mean, you know, Meryl, for one. You know, she was on the cover of Time magazine in, like, 1977 or something like that, I think, because I was in high school and I remember I said to my dad, I said, “Do you see this woman?” I said, “She’s amazing, and she’s doing all this stuff!” So she was the one contemporary actress that I kind of noticed, so I was like, “Holy cow!” But, then, I see it everywhere. I see all sorts of performers that I admire, I have admired. And I think when an actor is able to, like, kind of bring an emotion, you know— Isabelle Huppert, always—I watch her and I’m like, “Holy cow!” She makes me feel something. Kathy Bates—I actually once stopped Kathy Bates because she’s done so many performances where she starts to do something and then, like, all this feeling comes up, you know? Dianne Wiest is another one. I mean, there are just so many. Young people? Kristen Stewart in “Into the Wild,” you know? Kate Winslet’s always beautiful. I mean, there are so many.

Is there one person out there who you would particularly like to work with?
You mean a director or an actor?

Director, or actor, or actress…
There’s a ton! I think there’s a ton. The fact is that even though I’ve worked for many, many years and stuff, I always feel that there are people that, you know, I’d love to work with. I’d love to work Ang Lee, you know? I’d love to work Scorsese. I’d like to work with Steven Spielberg again, you know? I mean, I don’t know, there’s just a gazillion.

Many, many years from now, when we’re all gone, what would you like people to say when they’re flipping through the film history books? Who was Julianne Moore? What was this career about?
I think if they even remembered me that would be enough! [laughs] That, in itself—that would be fine.

Photo: Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore in “Chloe.” Courtesy: Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group.