Julianne Moore

About Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore (born December 3, 1960) is an Academy and BAFTA Award nominated, Emmy and Golden Globe winning American actress.

Moore was born Julie Anne Smith at Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, North Carolina, the daughter of Anne, a psychiatric social worker who emigrated from Dunoon, Scotland, and Peter Moore Smith, a military lawyer, judge, helicopter pilot and army colonel. She has a younger sister, Valerie, and younger brother, novelist Peter Moore Smith III. Growing up as an "army brat" she lived in several places across the United States and Germany. Moore attended Frankfurt American High School in Frankfurt, Germany, graduating in 1979. She received her Bachelor's degree at the College of Fine Arts at Boston University.

Moore moved to New York City in 1983, working as a waitress before being cast in the dual roles of Frannie Hughes and Sabrina Hughes on the soap opera As the World Turns, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award; she played the roles from 1985 to 1988. In 1987 she was part of the junior company in the New York premiere of Caryl Churchill's Serous Money at the Public Theater. Because of Screen Actors Guild rules, she had to change her name, since there were already actresses named "Julie Smith" and "Julianne Smith". She chose her father's middle name, "Moore", but because there was already another actress named "Julie Moore", she finally settled on "Julianne Moore."