The Real Reason Demi Moore Divorced Her First Husband
About a decade before Demi Moore sat in front of that pottery wheel in 1990's Ghost, and long before she would make headlines with not one, but two incredibly high-profile marriages (and divorces), she was an 18-year-old aspiring actor saying "I do" to rock musician Freddy Moore. As any celebrity news connoisseur knows, she would go on to marry Bruce Willis, and after that split, she would wed Ashton Kutcher. But ahead of those two tabloid-friendly unions, there was her relationship with Freddy.
Although the A Few Good Men star would keep Freddy's last name throughout her rise to fame and beyond, the pair had a rocky marriage that only lasted from 1981 to 1985. Yes, there were some positive moments, like when Demi helped her first husband write his biggest hit single, 1980's "It's Not A Rumour," which he recorded with The Nu-Kats. However, it seems their relationship was doomed from the start. Even before the movie star walked down the aisle with Freddy, who was 12 years her senior, it was clear that they had a tough road ahead and the drama only escalated from there. Here are the real reasons why Demi Moore divorced her first husband, Freddy Moore.
Demi Moore's father's death rocked her world
Throughout her childhood and into her early teens, Demi Moore believed that her mother's second husband, Danny Guynes, was her dad. At 13, however, she discovered that was not the case when she found her birth certificate, which listed Charles Harmon as her biological father. According to the Daily Mail, Harmon left a pregnant Virginia King after just two months of marriage. Moore was then raised by King and Guynes who, according to USA Today, had a rocky on-and-off-again relationship tainted by their mutual struggle with alcoholism.
Even so, Moore considered Guynes to be her real father and when he died by suicide in 1980. The loss rocked her world. As the actor wrote in her memoir, Inside Out (via ET), she acted irrationally in the wake of his death. "My dad died in October. I turned eighteen in November. I got married to Freddy the following February," she wrote, admitting, "It was obviously a confusing and fraught time, and our wedding reflected the scattershot nature of the decision."
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
'Sabotage' struck the night before Demi Moore's first wedding
Demi Moore's marriage to Freddy Moore did not start off on the strongest of notes. The pair tied the knot in 1981 and divorced in 1985, but their relationship was tainted long before they walked down the aisle. As Moore recalled in her memoir, she had been unfaithful to her husband-to-be on multiple occasions, including just hours before saying "I do."
"The night before we got married, instead of working on my vows, I was calling a guy I'd met on a movie set," the Ghost star wrote in Inside Out (via People). "I snuck out of my own bachelorette party and went to his apartment," she recalled. As for why Demi, as she put it, "didn't go and see the man I was committing to spend the rest of my life with to express my doubts" that very night? "Because I couldn't face the fact that I was getting married to distract myself from grieving the death of my father."
Demi continued, "Because I felt there was no room to question what I'd already put in motion. I couldn't get out of the marriage, but I could sabotage it."
Did Demi Moore have an affair with her co-star?
While Demi Moore admitted she was unfaithful the night before her nuptials, she didn't name names. Her discretion was wasted, however, when Fight Club actor Paul Carafotes claimed to DailyMailTV he was the man in question. The pair played a couple in 1981's Choices and had a months-long affair, according to the actor. Calling her "different from all the other girls," Carafotes claimed, "We had an affinity for each other and liked each other very much. We laughed, had a good time and played around on the set and this developed into a relationship over a little bit of time. And then I guess we had an affair."
Recalling the night of Moore's bachelorette party, which he claims was the last time they were intimate, Carafotes told the outlet he was sleeping and brushed Moore off when she called to say she wanted to come over. But "she was persistent. Then I finally said, 'Look, uh, if you want to come over, I'll open the kitchen window. You can climb the fire escape, I'm four flights up. If you want to do that, then you have at it.'" He continued, "The next thing I knew she was standing there with a bottle of Dom Perignon, standing over my bed saying, 'Let's do this, let's party.' I was shocked, she was wild." When the next morning rolled around, Carafotes said he reminded her it was her wedding day "and off she went."
Freddy and Demi Moore's age difference was a factor
When Demi Moore first met Freddy Moore she was just 16 and, as she wrote in Inside Out, her age and lack of experience in the world led her to make a reckless decision: have an affair with Freddy. According to the Daily Mail, the musician was married to his first wife, Lucy, at the time, but apparently, Freddy's marital status was not much of a road block. As Demi admitted in her memoir (via Us Weekly), "I was a self-absorbed teenager who hadn't been raised with a lot of respect for the institution of marriage. And I jumped into life with Freddy without, I'm sorry to say, much concern for his wife."
In addition to Moore being just too young for a serious relationship, the couple's age difference may also have set them up for failure. When they said "I do," Demi was just 18 and Freddy was 30. The 12-year difference obviously didn't work in their favor, with the G.I. Jane actor later calling her 15-year age gap with third husband Ashton Kutcher "a do-over." She wrote (via The New York Times) that it was "like I could just go back in time and experience what it was like to be young, with him — much more so than I'd ever been able to experience it when I was actually in my twenties."
Substance abuse might have played a role for Demi Moore
One of the many hurdles Demi and Freddy Moore's union faced was the actor's substance abuse. As she revealed in Inside Out (via ET), she began smoking, drinking, and partying in middle school, before dropping out at 16 and moving in with a 28-year-old Freddy. She soon landed a role on General Hospital and "quit drinking, cold turkey" because, as she wrote in her memoir (via Carlsbad Current Argus), "alcohol was moving me back to where I came from instead of forward into the future I envisioned for myself." What she didn't stop, however, was using cocaine, which slowly "escalated into a dependency."
As the Striptease star shared in Inside Out, cocaine was a constant throughout her first marriage and when it failed, she also started drinking again. Things got so bad that if she hadn't been cast in 1985's St. Elmo's Fire, right around the time of her divorce, she might not have made it. As Demi revealed, the film's team gave her an ultimatum: go to rehab or lose the role. She chose the first. "I had something much bigger than me to fight for. And so I did," she wrote.
Explaining her decision to get clean, she added, "I wanted to be present, not dulled by alcohol or sped up by cocaine, and I dedicated myself fully to the process." She concluded, "If I hadn't gone to rehab to make that film, I really wonder if I'd still be alive."
Demi Moore tried to change herself — and it backfired
Demi Moore hasn't been the luckiest in love. Following her split from Freddy in 1985, she married Bruce Willis in 1987 after just four months of dating. While their relationship lasted over a decade, the pair went their separate ways in 2000 with Moore later calling the Die Hard actor too "controlling." Three years after that, she began dating Ashton Kutcher and the two were married in 2005, but finalized their divorce in 2013 after Kutcher was caught being unfaithful.
Despite the cheating and personality clashes, however, Moore puts much of the blame on herself. Looking back on her failed relationships during an interview on SiriusXM's Jess Cagle Show in 2020, she said a reason for her splits has been her tendency to change who she was. "I think it's a process of, you know, not to sound cliché, but it's really, it's a process of learning to love yourself," she revealed. "You know, accepting who you are just as you are. For me, I had changed myself so many times over and over to fit what I thought somebody else wanted."
Moore went on to note that "we're kind of conditioned" to live up to other's desires. "Working through a relationship ... is really commendable in our disposable times," she said. "You know, to go through the journey of really honoring the love that brought you together in the first place and to really give it everything you've got."
Freddy Moore moved on after the divorce
Demi Moore may have initially hidden her infidelity from Freddy Moore, but she did eventually come clean to her husband. In her memoir, Demi revealed that when she confessed to being unfaithful, Freddy's reaction wasn't necessarily what she expected: He moved on as soon as he could... with a 14-year-old guitar student.
"I noticed right away that Freddy and Renee had a connection — despite his being more than twice her age — and one afternoon I told them, 'If anything ever happened to Freddy and me, I bet you two would get together,'" Moore wrote in Inside Out (via ET). "Renee was embarrassed, and he was furious with me for upsetting her at the time, but as soon as Freddy and I broke up, they got together, and they're still a couple to this day," she continued.
Freddy and Renee did indeed tie the knot in 2005, per Fox News, and as Renee wrote on her blog in 2019, she "married the love of my life." Revealing that her husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she offered a glimpse into their relationship, gushing, "He was brilliant, a genius in fact, handsome, and so loving and giving, the sweetest person you could ever meet." She added, "He was an amazing songwriter, musician and singer. We would have conversation until the early hours of the morning and being together was heavenly."
Demi Moore's first husband wants to read her memoir
Despite all of the bombshell revelations that Demi Moore peppered throughout 2019's Inside Out, it appears that Freddy Moore was not too apprehensive to check out what his ex wrote. Some people may not have the stomach for thumbing through a book where their former spouse airs their dirty laundry in such a public way, but Freddy does not seem totally opposed to revisiting that chapter (pun intended) of his life.
The usually private Freddy, who is now battling Alzheimer's, was spotted in Los Angeles in September 2019 and asked if he had read the memoir. In the video, which was obtained by the Daily Mail, Freddy told reporter he hadn't, but said he would read the book "as fast as I can."
Meanwhile, his wife, Renee Moore, brushed off Inside Out's headline-making excerpts, telling Fox News, "We have not seen the book, so can't and won't comment on any specifics. What I will say is that Rick [Freddy] and Demi were married a long time ago when both of their lives were very different," she noted, concluding, "In the time since they have both moved on to their own paths."