Harper's Bazaar
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Entertainment
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Entertainment
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Beauty
2012 Trends
It was a tough 2011 for Demi Moore: She split with husband of six years Ashton Kutcher amid rumors of his infidelity, and was subsequently dogged by chatter that she'd grown far too thin. But in a candid Q&A in the February issue of Harper's Bazaar, the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Kutcher comes off as strong and upbeat despite it all -- though she does admit to being deathly afraid that she's "really not lovable."
"I used to think that what scared me was the idea of being abandoned until someone said to me, 'Only children can be abandoned. Adults can't be abandoned because we have a choice. Children don't have a choice,'" Moore, 49, says in the interview, which took place shortly after Thanksgiving. "So I started to rethink. 'Okay, it's not that. What's the underlying thread that really scares me?' I think what scares me is not having the courage to reach my full potential."
And just what could prevent her from reaching that maximum potential? "I think there is no way to reach your fullest potential if you don't really find the love of yourself," she says. "If I were to answer it just kind of bold-faced, I would say what scares me is that I'm going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I'm really not lovable, that I'm not worthy of being loved. That there's something fundamentally wrong with me."
Another one of Demi's big struggles is with the public's -- and her own -- perception of her constantly changing body. Most recently, that perception has been that she's looked frail since her split from Kutcher. While Demi acknowledges that she's gotten skinnier, however, she insists she OK with it.
"I have had a love-hate relationship with my body. When I'm at the greatest odds with my body, it's usually because I feel my body's betraying me, whether that's been in the past, struggling with my weight and feeling that I couldn't eat what I wanted to eat, or that I couldn't get my body to do what I wanted it to do," Moore says. "I think I sit today in a place of greater acceptance of my body, and that includes not just my weight but all of the things that come with your changing body as you age to now experiencing my body as extremely thin -- thin in a way that I never imagined somebody would be saying to me, 'You're too thin, and you don't look good.'"
But Moore tries not to fret over her body too much. "I find peace when I don't see my body as my enemy, when I step back and have appreciation and look at all that my body has done for me," she says. "It's allowed me to give birth to three beautiful children, allowed me to explore different roles as an actor, allowed me to be strong. You can't look at yourself in the mirror and tear your body apart. You have to look at it and go, 'Thank you. Thank you for standing by me, for being there for me no matter what I have put you through.'"
