Demi Moore revealed that she believes Tom Cruise “was quite embarrassed” by her pregnancy during the early stages of A Few Good Men. Speaking at the New Yorker Festival on Saturday, the 61-year-old actress recalled reading lines with Cruise, 63, while she was eight months pregnant with her daughter, Scout LaRue Willis.
“I think Tom [Cruise] was quite embarrassed,” Moore said during her conversation with journalist Jia Tolentino, according to People. “I actually felt okay about it. I was moving around, though, right? But I could tell he felt that it was a bit awkward,” she added. Cruise’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Before filming began on the 1992 Oscar-nominated film starring Moore, Cruise, and Jack Nicholson, Moore said she had started working out regularly while pregnant. Looking back, she now questions that decision. “I look back at that time now, and I go, ‘What the f— was I thinking?’ And what was I even trying to prove? But it wasn’t as supported as it is today,” she said.
Moore explained that her experience reflected the lack of understanding and support for pregnant women in Hollywood at the time. She recalled how Cruise’s discomfort and her own pressure to perform highlighted the challenges women faced in balancing motherhood and acting careers.
“It’s one of the many things, for me, that I just felt didn’t make sense. And so I challenged that to say, you know, ‘Why not? Why can’t you have both?” Moore said. Her comments come decades after actress Hunter Tylo successfully sued Spelling Entertainment Group in 1996 for pregnancy discrimination. A Los Angeles judge awarded Tylo $4.9 million plus $1 million in legal fees after she was fired for becoming pregnant.
Moore said she maintained an active lifestyle throughout her pregnancy. “I did a two-and-a-half-hour hike the day my water broke. I did a 24-mile bike ride, and then was dancing at a reggae club,” she recalled, adding that it was no surprise her daughter arrived two and a half weeks early.
Moore shares Scout, 34, with her ex-husband Bruce Willis, 70. The pair also has two other daughters, Rumer, 37, and Tallulah, 31. During her second pregnancy, Moore appeared nude and heavily pregnant on the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair, a photo that became a cultural touchstone. “Pregnancy agrees with me,” she said at the time.
A Few Good Men, in which Moore portrayed Navy lawyer Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway, grossed $141.3 million worldwide. Now, more than three decades later, Moore is again in the spotlight. She earned a 2025 Academy Award nomination for The Substance, where she plays an aging celebrity who turns to a black-market drug to restore her youth.
“The thing that’s moved me the most is, obviously, I knew women of my age would absolutely relate and connect, but it’s the young people that have come up who have seen themselves in this that has moved me the most,” she said.