Julianne Moore Reflects on Her Debut Horror Film Tales From the Darkside: The Movie

Julianne Moore has starred in a number of critically acclaimed projects and earned herself a variety of awards, but like many other performers, she got her start in the world of horror, with her first big-screen effort being 1990’s Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. The actor is returning to the world of horror for the upcoming Apple TV+ adaptation of Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story, though Moore recently reflected upon her experience shooting a segment for her first horror film, and how she was so fresh to the concept, she nearly left the production before she had actually finished shooting all of her scenes.

“I really remember this because this is the part of the movie I didn’t think that I was in. It was my first movie, this horror movie,” Moore recalled to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “We were shooting in Yonkers and I was so excited to get this horror movie, and I have a tendency even now not to read anything but the dialogue when I get a script. I don’t like stage directions, I don’t like hearing, ‘She walks down the street jauntily’. I know I walk down the street, I might not be jaunty, I don’t want to know what they think. But I want to figure it out, right?”

She continued, “So I don’t read any of the stage directions. So on this job, it was a really quick job, I finished and I got killed by the mummy, and I went over to the director and say goodbye and ‘Thank you for this great opportunity and he’s like, ‘You’re not done.’ I’m like, ‘No, this is my last scene.’ He goes, ‘No, no… you didn’t finish reading the script, did you?’ Because I turn into a mummy at the end and I come back and I kill somebody else, but it was all in stage directions and I never read it! So it was so incredibly unprofessional of me, I didn’t read the script!”

With Moore serving as a producer on Lisey’s Story, we doubt she’ll make a similar mistake.

Lisey’s Story is a deeply personal, pensive thriller that follows Lisey Landon (played by Julianne Moore) two years after the death of her husband, famous novelist Scott Landon (played by Clive Owen). A series of unsettling events causes Lisey to face memories of her marriage to Scott that she has deliberately blocked out of her mind. Dane DeHaan, Joan Allen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ron Cephas Jones, and Sung Kang star alongside Moore and Owen.

Check out Lisey’s Story when it premieres on Apple TV+ on June 4th.

Do you remember Moore’s horror movie debut? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!