"It's us," Mandy Moore, star of why she "works at my best now" – Variety

Mandy Moore, star of "This Is Us", has grown from a teenage pop star to an adult juggling with singing, acting and, soon enough, professional production. On March 25, she is celebrated for her achievements with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, an honor she calls "extremely humiliating."

"I feel like I'm at my best now. I know what I want; I know how to ask it; I know how to fix the problem until I get it, "Moore says. "I'm better able to take the lead and recognize the value I bring to the plate. I guess it only comes with wisdom and clarity of time and age. "

The singer turned actress had her first experience of glory at the turn of the century when her first single, "Candy", made her debut in the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Two years later, she turned her head with films like "The Princess Diaries "and earned early lead roles in" A Walk to Remember "and" Chasing Liberty ".

Moore attributes the fact that she did not have "a huge success" as a pop star (this first single culminates at the 41st rank of the Billboard, for example), which allowed her to pbad so easily in others media.

"I think it's intrinsically harder, if you're a wild global success in an arena to take you seriously to do something totally different," she says. "I may not have been as successful as my contemporaries [and] that made me become more of a chameleon. "

Related

For her role as Jamie Sullivan in "Stepping Ahead" in 2002, Moore is dyed her hair brown, which she says has helped to "make the audience aware" of who she was and what she could do. This was the first, simplest way to immerse yourself in a role, but this transformation has become an integral part of its process.

Over the years, Moore has evolved between music, film and television. For the latter, she appeared in a series of pop culture phenomena including "Entourage", "Scrubs" and "Gray's Anatomy" before playing the role of Rebecca Pearson's matriarch in NBC's family drama " This Is Us ». decades of the character's life, from 16 to 60 years old.

"Mandy did not know we were going to age her when she would play that role," says Dan Fogelman, creator of "This Is Us," who also produced "Tangled," in which Moore voiced Rapunzel. "A little before the production of the series, I met her and told her what I thought. The promise made was that if we did not buy it 100%, we would endorse and throw an old Rebecca. … I always have the first picture of old Rebecca that they have still taken, I keep it in a file stored on my computer under "This Is Us" for things I did not want to lose. This is the first thing in the file.

Although Moore admits that she was initially "terrified" by the challenge, she trusted the team behind the series after many makeup tests. Intense homework, including working with a "physics coach", also helped her develop the muscles needed to represent the character at every stage of her life.

During the first season of "This Is Us," Moore began thinking about the older version of his character's energy: a "lamp with a blind shade and light going directly to the ceiling," says -she. "There is something rigid and very strong about it."

By imagining this posture, on the part of a woman who is perhaps "a little calmer" but also "a little more stable, confident and comfortable in her skin", badociated with the establishment of the wig and appropriate clothing, Moore immediately slips into the character.

Fogelman admits that Moore has influenced the evolution of the character in many ways, starting with the fact that she once dreamed of becoming a singer. But he also ended up including a monologue reserved for auditions, in which Rebecca tells a drunk Jack that he had to rise up and become a better parent, in a later episode of the series, because Moore was so moving when she read it.

"Mandy is so approachable and so winning that she could easily have been admired as a pop star turned romcom, but it's a monstrous actor that I would put in confidence with the biggest and the most wicked. there, "he says. "She never blinks every time we challenge her, and now people see her as such. The lesson: if you judge a book on its cover, you may miss a beautiful story. "

Three seasons in "This Is Us," becoming Rebecca looks like "putting on an old pair of shoes," says Moore. Nevertheless, she says she is confronted with the content she is given in each week's scripts as she discovers new pieces of her character's past.

"I play this imperfect woman and I play her when she is more idealistic, optimistic and career-hungry; I play it like a kind of overwhelmed mother; I'm sad because she lost her husband, "she says. "It's the dream job. That's what you expect these 20 years in a career. "

In the summer after Moore's first season on "This Is Us", his independent film "47 Meters Down" finally opened in theaters. The film had been presented to him as "Do you want to go under water for six weeks?" While she was going through an "acrimonious divorce" (from musician Ryan Adams, whom Moore had talked about earlier this year after the harbadment and allegations of abuse rose up against him and Moore did not no additional comments about it at that time). "It sounds like the strangest and craziest challenge. register me, "she recalls. "47 Meters Down" was then shot two years before playing her main role on NBC, and Moore admits she "had" no idea [if] he was never going to arrive. But Byron Allen and his entertainment studio company offered $ 3 million to the original distributor, Dimension Films.

Allen has already said Variety he knew that the release of a movie about sharks this summer "will never fail," and a combination of timing and Moore's growing profile has undoubtedly helped move the film to the top of the list of the most profitable independent films in 2017, bringing in nearly $ 45 million in the United States. box office.

A sequel is now planned, although Moore has instead turned to bigger things on the ground. In September, she signed a two-year production contract with 20th Century Fox Television to develop and produce new series.

Moore plans to use the few months of her "This Is Us" hiatus to "find projects designed for women, by women," on which she can work behind the scenes. "I'd like to find something with a musical inclination," she says. "I am obsessed with news and politics. I would like to find these stories told through a female lens. "

And Moore is also looking forward to returning to the recording studio to create new music.

"This is the season of my life that I am most proud of. The choices I have made, the woman that I strive to be, the people with whom I have the chance to be surrounded both personally and professionally, Is a chapter of my life that I enjoy and that I really try to keep and develop, but it took a lot of work to get here.