Into The Deep.(Interview)

Byline: Rebecca Mead PHOTOGRAPHED BY TOM MUNRO

Into the Deep

Comfortable with nudity, controversial roles, and speaking her mind, Julianne Moore explains why she's up for anything.

W hen Julianne Moore and her husband, director Bart Freundlich, bought a house in Montauk, on New York's Long Island, a few years ago, one of the first things they did was put in a pool. Moore likes to swim, both at home and at the beach, but when she gets in the water, it's only after completely suiting up. "I have what I call 'my outfit,' " she says. "I wear a long-sleeved rash guard and a pair of board shorts. It's not so sexy, but I keep myself covered. My husband hates it. But if you ever see me at a water park, that's what I'll be wearing."

Moore's outfit is certainly a good argument in favor of avoiding the sun: Her pale, translucent skin is unlined, if heavily freckled. But it is also evidence of Moore's good-natured unpretentiousness, as is the getup she's wearing when she welcomes me to her home: a pair of cutoff, ripped-up jeans and a green plaid shirt. "It's a fashion plaid shirt," she says with a laugh. "It's a Japanese designer, R by 45rpm. They have a store in SoHo." She's also wearing an enormous floppy hat, a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses, and Birkenstocks. It's the kind of look that works well in Montauk, where Moore is both a local celebrity (a 14-year-old boy stopped her on the street the other day and demanded to know what movies she'd been in: "Nothing for kids," she said firmly) and simply a local.

"The difference is kissing someone you know versus someone you don't."

Like many successful actors, Moore has had a long and varied working life, having been cast at first in the kind of supporting roles it's easy to forget she ever playeduntil they appear on late-night cable and you find yourself watching and thinking, Wow, she was good in that. (She was the deliciously …