The  daughter  of  a  military   judge  and  a  Scottish  social  worker,   Julianne
Moore  was  born  in Fayetteville,  North Carolina on  December 3,  1960.  She
spent  the early  years of her life in over two dozen locations around  the  world
with her parents before she finally found her place at Boston University, where
she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree in acting from the School
of the Performing Arts.

After graduation(in 1983), Julianne moved to New York and worked extensively
in theater,  including appearances  off-Broadway  in  two  Caryl Churchill plays,
Serious  Money and  Ice Cream With  Hot Fudge and as Ophelia in Hamlet at
The  Guthrie Theatre.  But  despite  her  formal  training,  Julianne  fell  into  the
attractive  actress'   trap  of  the  mid-1980's:   TV  soaps  and  miniseries.   She
appeared  briefly  in  the  daytime  serial 
The Edge of Night and  from  1985 to
1988  she played  two  half-sisters  Frannie  and  Sabrina  on  the soap
As The
World Turns
.  This  performance  later led  to  an Oustanding  Ingenue Daytime
Emmy  Award  in 1988.  Her  subsequent  appearances  have  been  in  mostly
forgettable  TV-movies,  such  as  
Money, Power, MurderThe Last  to Go and
Cast a Deadly Spell.

She made her entrance into the big screen with 1990's
Tales from the Darkside:
The Movie
,  where she played the victim of a mummy. Two years later, Julianne appeared  in  feature  films  with  supporting parts in  The Hand That Rocks the
Cradle
and  the  comedy  The  Gun in  Betty Lou's Handbag.   She kept winning
better   and  more  powerful  roles  as  time   went   on,   including  a  small   but
memorable role as Harrison Ford's colleague in
The Fugitive. (A role that made
such an impression on Steven Spielberg  that  he cast her in the 
Jurassic  Park
sequel  without  an  audition  in 1997).  In  one  of  Moore's  most  distinguished
performances,  she recapitulated her  "beguiling  Yelena  from  Andre Gregory's
workshop   version   of   Chekhov's  
Uncle   Vanya  in   Louis   Malle's   critically
acclaimed
Vanya on 42nd Street.

Director  Todd Haynes  gave Julianne her  first opportunity to take on a lead role
in
Safe.  Her  portrayal of Carol White,  an affluent  L.A. housewife who develops
an  inexplicable  allergic reaction to her envirorment,  won critical praise as well
as an  Independent  Spirit Award nomination.  Later that year she found her way
into romantic comedy,  co-starring as  Hugh Grant's  pregnant girlfriend in 
Nine
Months
.  Following  films included  Assassins,  where she played an electronics
security  expert   targeted   for  death   (next  to   Sylvester  Stallone  and   Antonio
Banderas)   and 
Surviving Picasso,   where she played Dora Maar,   one  of  the
numerous lovers of Picasso (portrayed by her hero, Anthony Hopkins).

A  year  later,   after  co-starring in  Spielberg's 
The  Lost  World: J urassic  Park,
opposite  Jeff  Goldblum,  a  young  and  unknown  director,   Paul  T.  Anderson
asked Julianne to appear in his movie, 
Boogie Nights.  Despite her misgivings,
she finally  was won over by the script and her decision to play the role of Amber
Waves,  a loving porn star who acts as a mother figure to a ragtag crew,  proved
to be a wise one,  since she received both  Golden Globe  and  Academy Award nominations.   Julianne  started  1998   by  playing  an  erotic  artist  in  
The  Big
Lebowski
,  continued with a small role in the social comedy  Chicago Cab and
and ended with a subtle performance in Gus Van Sant's remake of
Psyco.

1999 had Moore as buisy as an actress can be. She starred in a number of high-
profile projects,  beginning with Robert  Altman's
Cookie's Fortune, in which she
was  cast   as   the  mentally  challenged   but   adorable   sister  of   a  decidedly
unhinged Glenn Close.  A  portrayal of  the scheming  Mrs. Cheveley  followed in
Oliver Parker 's 
An Ideal Husband with a number of critics asserting that Moore
was  the best  part  of  the movie.   She  then  enjoyed  another collaboration with
director  Anderson in 
Magnolia and continued with an outstanding performance
in
The End of the Affair,  for which she garnered another Oscar nomination.  She
ended 1999  with another great performance,  that of a grieving mother in
A Map
of the World
, opposite Sigourney Weaver.
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