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Demi Moore in Charlie's Angels

Sunday 1 June. The MTV Movie Awards. Backstage Demi Moore is showing off an estimated $380,000 worth of surgical work.

The rumour mill insists that her eyes have been lifted, teeth bleached, lips plumped, the fat sucked out of her stomach and thighs and her skin chemically peeled so that the 40-yearold actress would be camera-ready for her comeback in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, her first film appearance this millennium and already touted as one of the greatest celluloid resurrections since Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Indeed, mention 'comeback' and Moore even echoes Swanson: 'This isn't a comeback. I've just been doing other things.'

Yet right this second Moore displays little of her usual self-confidence. She kisses her 25-yearold boyfriend, actor Ashton Kutcher, the latest in a line of progressively younger suitors that has included Leo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Colin Farrell, all - no doubt coincidentally --dated as their careers went supernova. She is about to present the prize for Breakthrough Male Performance and she's nervous. What sort of reception can the former First Lady Of Film expect after five years away?

She is clearly unprepared when the roar of approval hits. She falters, then proceeds to the podium. The cheering continues as she announces Eminem's win. Finally she breaks into a grin. Demi Moore is back. Big time.

When Charlie's Angel and producer Drew Barrymore rang Moore a year ago, she found an icon in exile, all drive spent. This wasn't the Bitch Goddess who posed nude, pregnant and proud for Vanity Fair and used to boast, 'I want things to be the best they can be for me. I want greatness.' Says Barrymore, 'Demi was hesitant to take the part of Madison Lee - I coaxed. I pleaded, to tell the truth.

It wasn't because she was scared of playing a villain. I think Demi felt she'd been out of the loop for too long.' And she had. Once the planet's most highly paid actress and one of the Nineties' Hollywood major names, the former mistress of media manipulation - even Madonna said of her, 'Nobody understands fame better,' - was practically a recluse, having retreated to her high-security home in Idaho to raise her three daughters. Her marriage to Bruce Willis had imploded.

Her once unstoppable career had been derailed by such spectacular flops as Striptease, G.I. Jane and The Scarlet Letter. Talk of box-office openings had been traded in for Eastern philosophy. Yoga had ousted two-hour 'punishment workouts'. Breast implants were removed. As a friend half joked, 'Demi's been mellowed by failure.' Still, Jerry Zucker, who directed her in Ghost, imagined she wouldn't have taken that much nudging to agree to return to the silver screen. 'She'd licked her wounds - the Demi Moore I know is the ultimate survivor.'

If Demi Moore is tough it's perhaps because the world made her that way. Her childhood in Roswell, New Mexico, was marked by poverty, alcoholism, divorce and two major surgeries to correct failing eyesight. Her stepfather was addicted to gambling and it was only when Moore was a teenager that she discovered he wasn't her father. His relationship with Moore's mother, Virginia, was abusive, and Virginia's relationship with her daughter was competitive. It wasn't until Virginia was dying that she and Demi were finally reconciled.

Moore was in her late teens when her real father committed suicide.

She escaped her background by marrying rocker Freddy Moore, at 18, a union that lasted three years. By the time she shot St Elmo's Fire with fellow Brat Packer and temporary fiancé Emilo Estevez, she was a fully fledged cokehead. She did rehab and recovered. As Rob

Lowe put it, 'Demi didn't just conquer her demons, she reinvented herself out of hell.'

And hell was exactly what Moore started dishing out once she married Bruce Willis and sat atop the Beverly Hills food chain. Overcompensation for the victim years said some, overwhelming arrogance claimed others. To many, she personified early Nineties' greed and celebrity control freakery. Nannies breaking confidentiality agreements were dragged into court, as were male employees claiming sexual harassment.

Still, her bad reputation as Gimme Moore Moore Moore might in retrospect be seen as sexist. Why was Moore crucified for asking to borrow a studio Learjet to carry her luggage - a typical star perk? And wasn't she right to complain about male stars earning more when they couldn't touch her power to pull in audiences?

Hollywood had its revenge and began casting the weeping romantic heroine of Ghost and Indecent Proposal in roles of staggering butchness. She's in army uniform in A Few Good Men, is basically Wall Street's Gordon Gekko in drag in Disclosure, and in G.I. Jane delivers the impeccably vulgar invitation 'Suck my dick.'

Still, Moore may be having the last laugh. That makeover ensures she's the focus when she shares the beach with Cameron Diaz in Full Throttle. She stole the LA premiere from under her fellow Angels' noses by parading both Kutcher and Willis before the flashbulbs. Although she only gave one interview to publicise Full Throttle (to American Vogue), she garnered those valuable gossip column inches by hitting the party circuit in ever more revealing outfits.

And despite cynicism about her manufactured 'red carpet romance' with Kutcher, witnesses say that the couple are besotted. As one observer at the MTV Awards gasped, 'She had that poor boy up against a wall and was devouring him.'

Oh yes, Demi Moore is definitely back. And she hasn't forgotten a trick.

• Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle opens Fri 4 Jul.

 

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