Jen Thomas
Demi Moore is a bona fide Hollywood A-lister, but life could have gone very differently if it hadn't been for one film.
Long before she became a household name, Demi was struggling to get get her life together, however, she has since gone on to star in the likes of Ghost, A Few Good Men, and Indecent Proposal.
As of recent, she's been collecting her flowers with the enormous success of The Substance, a 2024 body horror film directed by Coralie Fargeat, with her performance as Elisabeth Sparkle earning her an Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
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Before finding fame though, life was tough for Demi, and it was the intervention of one director who helped to save her.
The actor only had three films under her belt when she was cast in the coming-of-age drama St Elmo's Fire alongside some much bigger names.
Directed by Joel Schumacher, St Elmo's Fire follows the adventures of a group of college graduates as they all come to terms with the everyday struggles of adulthood.
As well as Demi, the film also starred Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy.
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Behind the scenes, however, she had been struggling with an alcohol and drug addiction at the time of the film's shooting.
It all came to a head when Schumacher came in to a wardrobe fitting and issued Demi with a major ultimatum, Far Out Magazine reports.
It was make or break time for the star, when Schumacher threatened to fire her if she had a drink during production, and a few days later, she was asked to attend an appointment at a rehab clinic.
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"They said, ‘What’s more important to you, the movie or your life?’ And I said, ‘The movie! What are you talking about?" she said (via PEOPLE).
"I didn’t have any value for myself."
In her 2019 memoir, 'Inside Out', Demi said that Schumacher and two producers had been responsible for getting her into rehab two weeks before filming, a moment which she said enabled her sobriety as well as the trajectory of her career.
“To this day, I see this as some version of divine intervention,” Demi wrote (via The Independent). “If I’d had to give up the movie and go through the programme to get sober for myself, I doubt I would have done it. I just didn’t value myself enough for that.”
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She thanks the 'enormous show of support' from Schumacher and the studio executives, enabling her to star in the film which launched her career.
In 1997, Schumacher told PEOPLE: "I told her I was firing her. I didn’t want to do what they had done with John Belushi, which was just give her the money to kill herself.
"When she came out (of rehab), we hired a counselor to live with Demi during filming. She’s been sober ever since."