"Add it to your regular checkup—that’s the way to remove the stigma," says the Oscar winner during World Alzheimer's Month.
Julianne Moore has always gravitated toward characters with depth—and she says the mental demands of acting go far beyond memorizing lines. Preparing for a role, she explains, requires the same stamina, focus, and discipline as training for a sport. It’s also what sparked her passion for brain health after portraying a woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s in Still Alice, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2015.
Now, the 64-year-old—whose recent projects include the Netflix series Sirens and Echo Valley on Apple TV+—has partnered with with Lilly for their new Brain Health Matters campaign. Especially as dementia disproportionately affects women more than men, she’s advocating for cognitive screenings to be as standard as mammograms or cholesterol checks.
In a conversation with The Healthy by Reader’s Digest this week, Julianne Moore shared why normalizing conversations around brain health could change the way we approach aging, how acting keeps her mentally sharp, and the wellness habits that support her brain and healthy aging.
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The Healthy by Reader’s Digest: Julianne, this campaign emphasizes early conversations about Alzheimer’s risks and factors. What personally made you want to partner on this project? What do you hope it changes about how people approach brain health?
Julianne Moore: I made the movie Still Alice about 10 years ago, and at the time, I knew absolutely nothing about Alzheimer’s disease. I didn’t know anyone who had it. It was really important for me to depict it as accurately as possible, so I had about two months to do research and I spoke to everyone I could—doctors doing research, people at the Alzheimer’s Association, physicians who were caregivers, people who had been recently diagnosed, women in very early stages, long-term care facilities, caregivers, patients.
It was comprehensive and fascinating. One of the reasons the director was so specific about making my character younger—a 50-year-old woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s—was that she wanted to separate the disease from the idea of aging. People often think Alzheimer’s is a condition of aging: that as you get older, you become senile. In fact, it’s a disease, and one we can mitigate with certain lifestyle changes.
Now we’re more aware of that. This campaign is another opportunity to talk about what people can do, how to take responsibility for their brain health, and to normalize conversations about it. Because when you go to the doctor for a regular physical, you’re advised to get a mammogram or colonoscopy; they check cholesterol, blood pressure. But they don’t necessarily offer a cognitive assessment. They should—and they will if you ask. Understanding the importance of that is key.
The Healthy: How can people bring it up with their doctor, even if they feel nervous?
Julianne Moore: There’s a lot of stigma around it. But I think doing it before something feels wrong is the best thing. Add it to your regular checkup—that’s the way to remove the stigma. I wish it were something routinely offered, and maybe it will be eventually. For example, with mammograms, we’ve normalized them. We don’t go because we feel something; we go because it’s preventative care. That’s what we need with brain health—go get checked. If you do find something early, there may be things you can do. If you wait until it’s progressed, it’s much harder.
The Healthy: What do you do personally to keep your brain sharp and healthy day to day?
Julianne Moore: I do all the New York Times puzzles that aren’t about math: Connections, Wordle, Spelling Bee. I enjoy them. I do a lot of reading. I’ve been doing yoga for about 25 years. For me, that’s the most important. I mean, it’s just great for me in terms of the meditation that it provides me, and then also the physical. It’s a wonderful mind-body experience, and that’s kind of what I need in terms of brain health and my physical health. I need that connection. I actually get really frustrated when I’m in a gym and there’s a lot of noise and I can’t focus and I feel overstimulated. That doesn’t help me.
I’m pretty careful about what I eat. I make sure I get a lot of sleep. I like to walk a lot. Living in New York, you get to kind of walk everywhere. And now, of course, there’s all these studies about how much social engagement matters. So you don’t need to feel guilty about spending time with your friends. You should!
The Healthy: There’s so much research now on isolation and loneliness affecting mental health and even longevity. How has your approach to health, wellness, nutrition, and exercise evolved over the years?
Julianne Moore: I don’t think I paid much attention to physical health until my late twenties, or maybe 30. Then I started exercising more with my health in mind. As an actor, we have to have a lot of stamina. I’m usually conscious about what I eat and how it affects me physically and mentally, because if I don’t eat well, I don’t perform well at work. Athletes will talk about when they eat, and what they eat, and how they time it. I really need to eat right before I’m on set, and then I have to have a snack in the middle of the day. I have to make sure I have a big meal at lunch, and then not so much at dinner. I have to get up at five o’clock in the morning, and I don’t go to sleep on a full stomach. I’m very, very careful about how I consume food and about making sure that my body is flexible and mobile so I can do the work. Those things are things that affect the amount of dialogue that I have to learn, the physical awareness that I have to have. All of that is really about brain health, too.
The Healthy: Angela Bassett recently told us something similar: she views her body like it’s VIP, so the food she eats has to be worthy of that.
Julianne Moore: Exactly. If you eat a big piece of cake, you feel sick. No one feels good after eating it. I can give myself a headache if I eat too much sugar. Your body tells you.
The Healthy: What’s one self-care ritual you refuse to skip?
Julianne Moore: Taking a bath. When I travel, I’m always looking for a hotel or rental with a bathtub. It’s how I unwind, how I signal the day is done. Sometimes I listen to a book while I’m in there. It’s really important to me.
The Healthy: You’ve had such a long, celebrated career. What do you credit for your staying power?
Julianne Moore: I remained interested. I’m always looking in different places for different opportunities and great scripts, and I still care about it. I’m interested, and I think when you maintain your interest in something, that’s really the most important thing. If it gets to be a kind of grind and you don’t care about it, it doesn’t give you any pleasure in this business. I think it’s really, really important to find the joy in just doing it.
The Healthy: What projects are you excited about?
Julianne Moore: I finished a movie with Jesse Eisenberg, who I love working with. It’s a comedy, and we got to sing in it, which was so fun. I worked with a voice teacher, learned songs—very stimulating. I’m also traveling this fall and planting our terrace at my new apartment, which I love.
For daily wellness updates, subscribe to The Healthy by Reader’s Digest newsletter and follow The Healthy on Facebook and Instagram. Keep reading:
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
