American actress
Julianne Moore met with children at this year's Giffoni
Children's Film Festival, where she received the festival's top
prize, the Francois Truffaut Award.
Moore said she discovered acting thanks to a high school
teacher who encouraged her.
"Then one day I saw Meryl Streep on the cover of Time
Magazine as the emerging actress of the moment. She become my
role model; I wanted to do what she had done," the 56-year-old
Moore told ANSA.
Moore was enthusiastically welcomed by the young members of
the festival's jury, who appeared in a video to tell about their
favorite Moore films, from her Oscar-winning appearance in Still
Alice, to her roles in Magnolia, The Hours and Hunger Games.
In terms of having children herself, Moore says it was
something she wanted, and that being a parent to her children
Caleb, now 19, and Liv, 15, with her husband, director Bart
Freundlich, has been "a great gift".
"Above all, I want to tell my children and the children here
at Giffoni not to underestimate how important it is to follow
your passions," Moore said.
"It is through them that you come to understand what it is
you truly want to do in life," she said.
Moore said being a mother is what pushed her to become an
activist for stricter gun laws in the US.
"My country is one where the right to bear arms is guaranteed
by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, therefore I prefer
to talk more about safety than gun control. We need to convince
people that just as we had to put in place laws to ensure that
cars wouldn't become deadly weapons, we need to do the same with
guns," she said.
When asked whether this is even more necessary now that Trump
is president, Moore said she feels it's a battle that she must
fight "as a citizen and as a mother" regardless of who's in
office.
Moore said she is also taking part in a campaign against
limits on migration, against the policies of the current
president.
"In America, except for Native Americans, we're all
immigrants; even I'm a first generation American," she said.
"The United States has been made great by and owes its
identity to immigration," she said.
Moore's upcoming films include "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"
by director Matthew Vaughan, and "Suburbicon", a black comedy
with George Clooney, as well as a currently untitled David O.
Russell series for Amazon TV with Robert De Niro.
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