Fifty Shades of Demi

Today Demi Moore is 50 years old, and as a fitting tribute to mark the occasion, I have compiled fifty facts about her life from the biography I wrote about her, which for this blog post, I have expanded to the present day in celebration of Demi's 50th! Some of the facts I list below are taken from my book, and some aren't. To find out more about Demi's amazing story up to when my book was originally published in September 2000, my biography of her is now available as an eBook and a POD paperback...

♥ Demi Moore was born Demetria Gene Guynes, (Demi for short and pronounced Dem-ee) on 11 November 1962 in Roswell, New Mexico. She was named after a hair wash product her mother spotted in a magazine.

♥ By the time she was fourteen, Demi, a self-described trailer park kid, had moved at least thirty times. 

♥ Her supposedly teenage parents, Danny and Virginia Guynes, divorced the following year. 

♥ Soon after the separation and Danny commits suicide, Demi discovers the true identity of her real father by accident. 

♥ She moves to Los Angeles with her mother, where she eventually drops out of Fairfax High School when she is sixteen years old. 

♥ She works as a bill collector, then as a pin-up girl who poses naked for the men's magazine Oui, and takes up an interest in acting after reading scripts with her neighbour,an aspiring actress named Nastassja Kinski. 

♥ In 1980, When Demi is eighteen, she marries rocker Freddy Moore, whose last name she adopts as her own. 

♥ Their marriage lasts for four years, but ends amicably, during which time she lands the role of reporter Jackie Templeton in the American daytime soap, General Hospital. 

♥ Two years later she appears topless in her first major motion picture, Blame It on Rio. Over the next 12 years, she will appear topless on screen five more times and appear nude on two Vanity Fair covers. 

♥ From her first salaries from television and film, Demi starts partying with drugs and alcohol until director Joel Schumacher fires her from the set of St. Elmo's Fire when she turns up high and tells her she has one week to clean up her act, which she does. 

♥ The movie helps launch Demi and her boyfriend Emilio Estevez into Brat Pack fame along with Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Andrew McCarthy. 

♥ In 1985, Demi and Estevez decide to marry, but two years later, they call off their on-again, off-again engagement. He says he was deeply in love with her and she says he was definitely her first love. 

♥ Soon after the break-up with Estevez, Demi meets Moonlighting star Bruce Willis at a screening of Stakeout, featuring her former fiancé, Estevez. Willis is a legendary drinker and carouser, but Demi takes a chance because, she said at the time, he was just so ready to embrace and give her love. 

♥ Following up on the diamond friendship ring Willis gave Demi ten days earlier, the two get hitched in a suite at the Golden Nugget hotel with a few guests. A big, black-tie celebration follows in Los Angeles a month later. 

♥ Demi gives birth to her first daughter, Rumer Willis, named after British writer Rumer Godden. She and Willis love being parents. 

♥ The couple continue to expand their family, with Scout LaRue on July 20, 1991, and Tallulah Belle on Feb 3, 1994. 

♥ Demi takes on the challenge of designing her own outfit for the Oscars, a black split-front gown over biker shorts and a bustier, land her on a few worst-dressed lists that year. 

♥ Starring with Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg, Demi gains wide attention as a grieving wife in the movie Ghost. It is a blockbuster at the box office and establishes Demi as a bankable A-list star. 

♥ In what becomes the cover shot seen round the world, Demi poses nude and seven months pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair. She also appeared again on the August 1992 cover, this time wearing nothing more than body pain. 

♥ Demi co-stars in a number of blockbusters, including A Few Good Men, The Juror and Disclosure, but the film that becomes a huge talking point is when she co-stars with Woody Harrelson in Indecent Proposal. She plays a wife who accepts one million dollars to sleep with another man, played by Robert Redford. Demi and director Adrian Lyne famously clash on set over the interpretation of Demi's role. 

♥ She makes her first of three appearances in People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful issue. 

♥ Cornering the Hollywood market on sex, power and money, Demi, now 32, becomes the highest-paid actress ever when she nabs a reported $12.5 million for 1996's Striptease, in which she plays stripper Erin Grant, who fights to regain custody of her daughter. 

♥ After the opening of the first Planet Hollywood in Orange County, California, three years earlier, the restaurant finally opens a location in its namesake town of Hollywood. Shareholders Willis, Demi, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger host a truckload of stars at the grand opening. Beset by financial problems, the branch closes unceremoniously in January 2000. 

♥ After settling into their new part-time residence in Hailey, Idaho, Demi and Willis invest $8 million restoring the area. Demi sports a nearly bald head for the movie G.I. Jane, prompting The New York Times to declare her new hairdo the moment a well-known exhibitionist gave new meaning to taking it all off. The film is a disappointment at the box office, but Demi's buff body and cropped style grab headlines. 

♥ After eleven years of marriage, Demi and Willis announce their separation. 

♥ Following the death of her mother from cancer, and fighting a lawsuit against her former nanny, Demi spends a few post-marriage years living a low-key life with her girls, but keeps her hand in film as the boss of Moving Pictures company. She strikes gold producing the Austin Powers movies. 

♥ After spending nearly four years with martial arts instructor Oliver Whitcomb, Demi makes a splash at an MTV Movie Awards after-party with Ashton Kutcher, they were all over each other, say observers.

♥ After years away from the big screen, Demi takes on the role of Madison Lee, the Angel gone bad in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. She didn't say yes right away, however. Producer and co-star Drew Barrymore wrote the part for her and wouldn't accept no for an answer. 

♥ Kutcher and Demi wed in a private Kabbalah ceremony at their Beverly Hills, California, home, joined by ex-husband Willis and 100 close friends and relatives. 

♥ Estevez directs and co-stars with Demi in Bobby, a drama set against the backdrop of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. 

♥ Demi poses for her first family portrait for Harper's Bazaar magazine with daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. 

♥ Before their fifth wedding anniversary, Demi and Kutcher present a united front as a tabloid claim the actor had an affair. Calling the cheating account defamation of character, the couple appear inseparable, with Kutcher joining his wife on the set of her film, The Reasonable Bunch. 

♥ After reports of marital discord surface, Demi finally sets the record straight, announcing her decision to end her six-year marriage to Ashton Kutcher. 

♥ Demi seeks treatment for exhaustion after an emergency call is placed from her home. 

♥ Today Demi turns 50!