Julianne Moore (born Julie Anne Smith; December 3, 1960) is a British-American (she considers herself mixed) actress and children's book author. A prolific cinema actress since the early 1990s, Moore has established a successful career in both art house and Hollywood films. She is known for her emotional portrayals of ordinary women, and has received four Academy Award nominations for her work.
After studying theatre at Boston University, Moore began her career with a series of television roles. From 1985 to 1988, she was a regular in the soap opera As the World Turns, earning a Daytime Emmy for her performance. She made her film debut in 1990, and continued to play supporting roles throughout the early 1990s. Moore made her breakthrough with Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), followed by critically acclaimed performances in Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and Safe (1995). Starring roles in the blockbusters Nine Months (1995) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) subsequently established her as a leading actress in Hollywood.
Moore received widespread recognition in the late 1990s and early 2000s, earning Oscar nominations for Boogie Nights (1997), The End of the Affair (1999), Far from Heaven (2002), and The Hours (2002). Other notable film appearances include The Big Lebowski (1998), Magnolia (1999), Hannibal (2001), and Children of Men (2006). She has continued to work regularly in the 2010s, receiving praise for her performances in The Kids Are All Right (2010) and in the TV film Game Change (2012), where she portrayed Sarah Palin and for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award, the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award. In addition to her film work, Moore has written a successful series of children's books. She is married to the director Bart Freundlich, with whom she has two children, and resides in New York City.