Demi Moore Reveals She Had a 24/7 'Sober Companion' While Filming St. Elmo's Fire: 'So Fearful of Failing'

Demi Moore gets frank about navigating stardom at a young age in a new documentary. 

Andrew McCarthy’s BRATS, which had its premiere at the Tribeca Festival, is a retrospective documentary about the so-called Brat Pack that includes interviews with 1980s icons like Moore, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Jon Cryer, Lea Thompson, Timothy Hutton and more.

McCarthy, 61, tracks down Moore and many of their costars from 1985’s classic St. Elmo's Fire to walk down memory lane over 40 years after the term Brat Pack was coined in a New York magazine story written by David Blum. 

“I was so fearful of failing, fearful of losing, and so desperate to fit in, belong,” says Moore, now 61, of filming St. Elmo’s Fire. “My need to please was definitely on high alert.”

Plus, a round-the-clock “sober companion” for her was arranged, she reveals: “They paid to have a sober companion with me 24/7, during the whole shooting.”

McCarthy responds to her disclosure with surprise. “Did they? I didn’t even notice,” he says.

Director Joel Schumacher, continues Moore, “stuck his neck out for me” when casting the movie, co-written with Carl Kurlander, about a college clique hanging out at a Washington, D.C. bar. “They could have easily just found someone else,” she says.

“Because it’s not like I had any box-office draw. You know, we were all just beginning. I didn’t have anything to really warrant him sticking by me.”

Moore detailed her journey with drug and alcohol abuse — both during her Hollywood breakout appearing on General Hospital and later, during her marriage to Ashton Kutcher — in her 2019 memoir Inside Out. That year, she told The New York Times she had maintained years of sobriety.

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In her BRATS interview with McCarthy, Moore recalls “going to treatment” at a rehab facility where staff objected to her starting work on St. Elmo’s Fire. “They said, ‘What’s more important to you, the movie or your life?’ And I said, ‘The movie! What are you talking about?’ ”

At the time, she adds, “I didn’t have any value for myself.”

Moore and McCarthy also discuss feeling “irritated” about the widespread use of the term Brat Pack in the press. “I just felt like it didn’t represent us and I felt like it was a really limited perspective,” says the Ghost star. 

“The fact that that [term] came out and it tried to diminish us was also an opportunity to rise above, to say, ‘No, I am much more than that.’ ”

Following its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, BRATS will stream on Hulu June 13. 

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.