Always Wanting Moore

Image credit: The End of the Affair: Columbia Pictures

The End of the Affair (Pictured, 1999) Moore's second Oscar nod came for her portrayal of a married woman having an affair with a writer (Ralph Fiennes) in war-torn Britain. She wrote to director Neil Jordan, begging to read for the part, but when the audition required her to cry on cue, she froze. ''I couldn't get it up at all. Not a tear. And I knew that the girl who had auditioned before me had sobbed. So I was convinced that I'd blown it.... [Filming] was probably one of the best experiences I've ever had, if not the best. We laughed a lot, which is kind of incredible when you think about it.''

Hannibal (2001) In a widely reported casting contest, Ridley Scott hired Moore over Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie, among others, to play Jodie Foster's ''Silence of the Lambs'' character opposite her ''Surviving Picasso'' costar Anthony Hopkins. ''I was in London doing 'End of the Affair,' and I got this call saying 'Ridley wants to meet you.' I flew back to New York, drove straight to the hotel, Ridley came over, we had a cup of coffee. The next day I got the offer. It was great to be with Tony again. We had such a fantastic time.''

(2002) Moore won the best-actress award at the Venice film festival for her performance in the Douglas Sirk homage, which reunited her with her ''Safe'' director, Todd Haynes. ''We don't need to speak to one another when we're working. We have an innate understanding of what the other one wants. The thing about 'Far From Heaven' is that it's not about the '50s. We were making a movie in the style of movies that were made in the '50s. This is not 1950s behavior; it's movie behavior. When Todd and I saw [the film] in Venice, I was very tense. I hadn't seen it with an audience before. No one laughed. They didn't make a peep. I was like, 'Boy, did I blow in that!'''

The Hours (2002) Playing the Mrs. Dalloway-reading Laura Brown in an adaptation of Michael Cunningham's novel meant that many of Moore's scenes were with 4-year-old Jack Rovello. ''It was an interesting way to work, because I realized I barely spoke. Nicole [Kidman] and Meryl [Streep] have all these speeches. They talk about this happening and that happening. 'Leonard! Get me out of Richmond!' and 'I feel like my life is crumbling!' And I'm like, 'We're gonna make a cake.'''