Julianne Moore Reveals the Brain Health Habit She Swears By: ‘It Controls Everything’ (EXCLUSIVE)
The Oscar winner shares her simple daily habits to protect her brain and keep her mind sharp
If you’ve ever worried about forgetting where you put your keys or blanked on a familiar name, you’re not alone—and neither is Academy Award-winning actress Julianne Moore. The Boogie Nights (1997) and The Kids Are All Right (2010) star has made it her mission to help women like you understand that protecting your brain health isn’t just about memory games and crossword puzzles—it’s about simple, daily choices that can make a real difference in keeping your mind sharp for years to come.
Moore’s passion for brain health advocacy began with one life-changing role. In 2014, Moore took on the emotionally taxing role of Alice Howland in Still Alice, which landed her an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. The film followed a young woman, Alice, who begins to experience issues with her memory, leading to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. While starring in the movie, Moore spoke with real Alzheimer’s patients, gathering details of their experiences for a more accurate portrayal of someone battling the disease.
Now, Moore is partnering with Eli Lilly to raise awareness for ‘Brain Health Matters,’ a campaign to get people thinking about their own brain health early on—before symptoms even begin. Woman’s World sat down with the actress and advocate to discuss the campaign and how she drew from her experience on Still Alice to help spread the word about protecting your brain health.
Woman's World Answers
Woman’s World (WW): Tell me a little bit about the campaign with Lilly brain health matters and why you decided to partner with them.
Julianne Moore: People don’t think about their brain health enough. They don’t prioritize it. You go for a regular checkup, you get your blood pressure checked and get a mammogram after a certain age and a colonoscopy… but brain health is something that we don’t always consider. Yet the brain controls everything in the body. It’s basically the control center for the entire body, so this campaign is really about getting people to talk to their physicians about their brain health and to normalize it.
There was always this assumption that Alzheimer’s and dementia were conditions of aging, but it’s a disease and it needs to be treated as such. I think people didn’t talk about it because they felt like it wasn’t something they had any control over. It was something that was just sort of out there, you know. And the more we learn about our own health, the better off we are making informed choices.
WW: Do you feel like there has been a stigma around brain health?
Julianne Moore: There’s definitely a stigma, but now that there’s more clarity about what it is and understanding about what causes it, it’s easier for people to talk about.
People think it’s about memory. Like, “Oh, I forgot where I put my keys” or “I can’t remember somebody’s name.” But really, it’s about function. When I was doing all the research for Still Alice, a lot of the women that I spoke to who had been recently diagnosed were working… it really is about the things that you do and improving your own function.
WW: What precautions would you consider taking to protect your own brain health and why?
Julianne Moore: Nutrition, exercise, sleep and social interaction really, really matter. Engaging with other people and being in your community, that’s what stimulates your brain. It’s important that people understand how much that contributes to their overall wellbeing and their brain health.
WW: Nutrition isn’t something that often comes to mind when you’re thinking about brain health. Usually, you’re thinking, “Maybe I’ll read a couple pages of a book every night or do the daily crossword,” but nutrition really is one of the biggest things.
Julianne Moore: And heart health, too. There’s an enormous correlation between heart disease and brain disease. If you’re somebody who has high blood pressure, then you’re somebody who’s at risk of a brain disease, and that’s something you really need to talk to your doctor about. And there’s also a website called BrainHealthMatters.com that people can go to that will provide all of this information.
WW: Why do you think it’s important for adults of all ages to start thinking proactively about their brain health?
Julianne Moore: The earlier you intervene with anything in your body, the earlier you can prevent things from happening. Often, if you wait for something to feel wrong, something may have progressed to a different point.
If you go in and get a baseline cognitive assessment before you’re even thinking that there’s anything going on with your brain health, you kind of know where you are. If that’s in your chart, each progressive year, you’re able to look at that and see whether or not there’s a problem somewhere.
WW: In Still Alice, your character receives a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. What sort of impact did that film and that character have on you, and how did it affect your decision to start raising awareness for brain health?
Julianne Moore: It was an astonishing experience. I mean, I couldn’t believe the generosity of the people that I encountered. The patients themselves were people at all stages of disease—people who have been recently diagnosed, people who are in long-term care, their caregivers, their doctors. People were extraordinary, because they really wanted to share their experience with me and make sure that it was portrayed accurately.
Lisa Genova, who wrote the book Still Alice, actually wrote it very particularly about someone with early onset because she wanted to separate the disease from this idea of aging. By showing it with a younger person, she’d be able to show the progression of that disease and how difficult it was for the patient and the family members around them.
I went and had a cognitive assessment—they call it a Mini-Mental—at a hospital with a neuropsychiatrist and a neurologist. Each segment of the test targets a different area of the brain. I was so interested and moved by the people doing this work. And subsequently, the amazing thing is, it sort of opens your eyes to the disease and how many people are dealing with it.
WW: Do you have any exciting projects coming up in the future that you would like to share about?
Julianne Moore: I shot a movie this year and it’s a musical. It was so much fun. It was great learning the songs and it was a wonderful group of people. It’s really joyous and terrific and I’m excited for the world to see it.
Conversation
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