Julianne Moore: Meeting Alzheimer’s patients for ‘Still Alice’ was ‘devastating’

TORONTO – For her role as a linguistics professor diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in “Still Alice,” Julianne Moore met with real women afflicted by the disease — an experience that deeply affected her.

“It’s devastating,” the Academy Award-nominated actress said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“One thing we all try to avoid is contemplating our own mortality. That’s something that everybody dealing with a disease can’t help but contemplate, because it’s a gradual loss of your self,” she said. “But I think what the film posits is: What is your essential self? If you’re losing your cognition, and you’re losing your intellect and your ability to communicate, then what’s left?”

Based on the bestselling novel by Lisa Genova, the film features Moore as an accomplished Columbia professor and a mother of three grown children, played by Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish.

Her performance as a woman losing her memories and her sense of self is already garnering Oscar buzz. The Hollywood Reporter said the film “could deliver gold for one of the most admired actresses of her generation,” while pop-culture website HitFix called Moore “shattering” in the “wonderfully restrained” movie.

The 53-year-old actress said she didn’t feel comfortable taking on the role unless she did extensive preparation. She met with women grappling with the illness, spoke with staff at a care home and took a “very involved” memory test at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

“It’s really something, man, it’s hard,” she said. “I did that and I talked to them about their research and then they sent me to a long-term care facility, where I observed people who were really very declined.”

She said she wanted to be as accurate as possible in portraying the behaviour of Alzheimer’s patients, who often pick at their clothes and rub their hands together.

“So all the physical behaviour and a lot of the vocal behaviour that you see (in the movie), these were all things I had seen. And then I felt like I was ready to do it,” she said.

Moore remains friends with a patient she met named Sandy. In a scene in which Moore’s character gives a speech at an Alzheimer’s convention, Sandy is in the audience.

“One of the reasons I really connected with her is that she has red hair. We look very similar. She was diagnosed at 45 and she spent her 50th birthday on the set,” said Moore. “She had been an (operating room) nurse in a neurosurgery unit when she was diagnosed. She’s had a hell of a time.”

The movie was directed by husband-and-husband team Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Glatzer has ALS, which gave him a unique perspective in making “Still Alice,” said Moore.

“Richard directed this movie speaking on an iPad. He’d lost all vocal control. It’s really been a rough year for him,” she said.

“I think one of the reasons this movie spoke to these directors… is what I said before. When the things that you count on as defining your sense of self (are) disappearing, what remains essential? Where is the person in all of that?

“And I think one of the reasons that ‘Still Alice’ is not — it’s very sad and very moving but it’s not a downer. I feel like there’s a moment of acknowledging what it is to be human and what it is to have a real relationship with someone.”

The Toronto International Film Festival wraps Sunday.