The more movies you do, the more staying home becomes appealing. When I started I thought, ‘Great, we’ll go on location to Timbuktu and it’ll all be a big adventure.’ Now my favourite trip is back to my loft in New York, to my kids, my husband [director Bart Freundlich], my café for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and blueberry muffins.
As a child, we lived in 23 different homes and I went to 14 schools, from Alaska to Pakistan, Germany to America. My father was a US army judge so wherever his job took him we went. I’d never intended to act but I learnt early I had to sing for my supper to make friends.
To be young in Europe was wonderfully informative. Americans don’t have that sense of living in a great big world because we are such a big country and we’re so much the same throughout it. It was good to know early on there was a lot more going on than what happens in your high school.
Any excuse to go to Paris is fine. I adore visiting flea markets and love to go to Le Marché aux Puces to look for treasures. Last time I bought a pair of wicker chairs and had to lug them home on the plane. I collect photographs, too, so I am always on the lookout.
I am always thrilled to arrive in Nice because I know I am going to Cannes for the film festival. It is a huge honour to be invited. It’s such an exotic part of the world: the Alpes-Maritime, the azure Mediterranean sky…
London, like New York, is a series of little villages. It’s a small big city. I have Irish, English and Scottish ancestry and love to hear the different accents spoken in London. People are defined by their surroundings and you have to learn to fit in wherever you come from.
In my 20s I made a pilgrimage to visit my mother’s hometown of Dunoon in Scotland. I never realised that across the Atlantic there were more like me. I met my aunts and cousins and everybody looked the same as I do with red hair, freckles and pale skin. For the first time ever I truly felt at home.
Julianne Moore stars in Chloe, which is on national release next month.
