She was born as Julie Anne Smith on December 3, 1969, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to father Peter Moore Smith, a military judge and army colonel, and mother Anne, a psychiatrist and social worker. She has a younger sister, Valerie, and older brother, Peter Moore Smith, Jr.
Moore grew up as an army brat and lived in twenty-three places across the world during her childhood. She graduated from the Frankfurt American High School in Germany in 1979. She then went on to study acting and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Boston’s School of the Performing Arts in 1983.
After graduation, Moore moved to New York City where she worked in several off-Broadway plays including Serious Money, Ice Cream With Hot Fudge, and as Ophelia in Hamlet at The Guthrie Theater.
While working as a waitress she landed a few roles in soap operas and miniseries. She started with a small role as Carmen Engler in a number of unknown episodes of the daytime serial The Edge of Night in 1984. The following year, Moore played the role of two half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes on the soap opera As the World Turns. She stayed with As the World Turns until 1988 and won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988 for her dual role.
A few more roles in forgettable television movies followed before Moore made her 1990 debut into the big screen with the role of a mummy’s victim in Tales From the Dark Side: The Movie.
Over the next three years she started getting better roles in feature films like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Benny and Joon with Johnny Depp, and The Fugitive. She also received critical acclaim and recognition for her part in 1993’s Short Cuts.
In 1995 Moore landed the role of Rebecca Taylor in the romantic comedy Nine Months, with Hugh Grant, Tom Arnold, and Joan Cusack. Two years later in 1997 she got the part of Dr. Sarah Harding in The Lost World: Jurassic Park without an audition because director Steven Spielberg had been so impressed with her acting skills in The Fugitive. It’s rumored that she’ll be playing Dr. Harding again in the film Jurassic Park IV set to be released in the summer of 2008.
Moore received several Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress for her roles in Boogie Nights, with Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Heather Graham, and Don Cheadle; The End of the Affair, with Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rea; Far From Heaven, with Dennis Quaid; and The Hours, with Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep.
In 2006 Moore co-starred with Samuel L Jackson in Freedomland, directed by Joe Roth. Moore has been married three times with her recent marriage since August 2003 being with director Bart Freundlich. The couple has been together since 1996 and has two children: son Caleb, born December 4, 1997, and daughter Liv Helen, born April 11, 2002.
YUDDY
