Demi Moore returns in a baseball cap and is crowned the “godmother” of Cannes

When Demi Moore glides down the red carpet to the glitzy Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on May 23 to host the 30th annual amFAR Gala at the Cannes Film Festival, she’ll probably, as her friend said, “make it look so easy.” how she does everything else.

It will be a comeback that will turn heads “Godmother of Cannes” for an actress who combined box office success with bitter personal tragedy that included addiction, broken families and two ex-husbands diagnosed with dementia, one of whom died from it.

Moore, 61, is fresh off a dazzling performance at the Met Gala, which was an elegant performance as suspected high-society husband killer Ann Woodward in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, not to mention Instagram video for “Burning Love” by Elvis Presley showing off Demi’s hard body in a leopard print bikini.

“Can we quickly talk about how this badass mom has a stronger physique at 61 than most 20-year-olds?” – asked one of her 5.2 million followers.

Those who know her say Moore’s strong physique is inferior to her steel will.

This, they say, snapped her out of a nightmarish and peripatetic childhood that began in Roswell, New Mexico and continued across the southern United States, which included rescuing her alcoholic mother from repeated suicide attempts and losing her stepfather, who committed suicide as a teenager.

It then helped her unexpectedly launch a career that made her, for a time, the highest-paid actress in the industry.

“I listened to her book on Audible and from there I connected with her,” said her friend, an influential political figure who has become her ally in recent years.

“I love her relationship with her daughters and how they have dealt with their own trials. Her own mother sold her, and then she enters an industry that eats people alive.

“But it seems like he will come out on top no matter what. I especially love seeing her with her little chihuahua, Pilaf. She seems to have really come into her own.”

It took some time, but the journey had more twists and turns than many of Moore’s greatest films, including “Ghost,” “Indecent Proposal,” “A Few Good Men,” “Striptease” and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.”

Currently single – her last relationship was with New York restaurateur Daniel Humm, from whom she separated in 2022 – she left behind three husbands.

Her first musician, Freddy Moore, whom she married when she was just 18, died in 2022 at the age of 72 from Alzheimer’s disease.

She became the caretaker and protector of her second husband, 69-year-old Bruce Willis, who at the height of his fame and during their marriage told Demi that he wasn’t sure he wanted to marry her.

Willis and his second wife, Emma Hemings, live with their two daughters near Demi in Hailey, Idaho, and are a blended family as they struggle with Willis’ frontotemporal dementia.

Demi’s third husband, Ashton Kutcher, who talked her into drinking again and encouraged her to have threesomes, is now married to Mila Kunis.

He resigned in semi-disgrace from the anti-trafficking organization he founded with Moore when he and Kunis were widely criticized for pleading with a judge for a lenient sentence for Ashton’s former partner, Danny Masterson, who was convicted of rape.

What’s striking about Moore, say those who know her, is that she’s only gotten lost twice.

Early in her career, she abused alcohol and cocaine until director Joel Schumacher said he wouldn’t hire her for “St. Elmo’s Fire” unless he gets sober.

She did this for 20 years, only relapsing when her third marriage to the much younger Kutcher, now 48, collapsed due to his infidelity.

In 2012, Moore was hospitalized for a reported overdose and was estranged from her three daughters for several years: Rumer (now 35, Scout (32) and Tallulah (30)) for several years, but since then all the foursome reconciled.

Currently, it appears that Moore has a soft spot for her first granddaughter, Louetta, who was born in April 2023 to Rumer and her partner, Derek Richard Thomas.

“Life is certainly not a straight line, and I think everyone here has dealt with not feeling good enough at some point in their life,” she said in 2018 when she was honored by Peggy Albrecht Friendly House, a program that helps women with addiction problems.

“I know that in a moment of great struggle for me, I reached out to a wise teacher and expressed my fear that I wasn’t good enough, and she said, ‘You’ll never be good enough, but you can know the value’ of your worth. Put the measuring cup down.’”

A few years ago, her youngest daughter, Tallulah Willis, who has spoken publicly about her emotional struggles, said, “I don’t think my mother was raised like that. It was faked. And the power that comes from it is intimidating. This is terrible.”

Moore mentioned in her 2019 memoir “Inside Out” that her long-troubled mother, Virginia Guynes, who died in 1998, may have prompted her to be raped by her owner when she was just 15 years old – one of many sobering details revealed in the book that Demi kept quiet about for years.

She still never mentions one of her half-brothers, 50-year-old James Craig Harmon, from her biological father, the late Air Force Airman Charles Harmon Sr., whom she never knew. who served time in prison after attacking his girlfriend in 2005.

After moving out of her mother’s apartment at the age of 16, the then-Demi Guynes met fledgling rocker Freddy Moore at a Hollywood nightclub and married him when she was just 18, after co-writing the song “It’s Not a Rumor” with him and appearing in an early music video for the song.

Moore landed a plum role in 1982 on the then-hottest soap opera “General Hospital” when she was just 19 years old, despite having almost zero acting experience or industry connections, and after severe emotional trauma – and apparently made a career out of never looking back back.

Especially during her brief foray into posing for cheesy nude photos.

“I remember interviewing her a few years later and she tried to tell me that Bruce Willis was her first husband, but she denied ever posing nude,” Alan Carter, who for many years specialized in writing about soap opera.

“She told me about four or five stories that weren’t true. I thought: Demi! I saw you on General Hospital.

“I know you’ve been married before. I saw you on the cover of Oui. Her publicist just said he didn’t remember the story. Okay, sure.”

Moore’s triumphant return to Cannes – in 1997 she helped host the amFAR gala in Cannes with the late Elizabeth Taylor – will include a turn as the “godmother” of Trophée Chopardwhich honors two emerging actors.

Moore’s next film is an English-language body horror film from French director Coralie Fargeat “Substance,” which will also premiere by Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid.

She also joined the cast of Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming Paramount series “Landman” alongside Billy Bob Thornton.

The show is based on the “Boomtown” podcast and is described as being about the “wild billionaires and wild billionaires of the proverbial boom towns of West Texas.”

“Success is the best revenge,” veteran producer Brian Balthazar told The Post.

“The way I see it is that sometimes I leave the company for a while, only to come back looking better than ever and doing a great job.

“I couldn’t take my eyes off her entrance to the Met Gala. Anyone who has ever doubted her identity need look no further than Demi Moore in 2024 to be proven wrong.