{"id":876254,"date":"2026-10-09T11:48:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T11:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876254\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T11:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T11:48:18","slug":"demi-moore-almost-lost-role-in-st-elmos-fire-to-madonna-after-showing-up-drunk-and-high-to-fitting-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876254\/","title":{"rendered":"Demi Moore almost lost role in \u201cSt. Elmo\u2019s Fire\u201d to Madonna after showing up \u2018drunk and high\u2019 to fitting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Key Points<\/p>\n

Demi Moore was nearly replaced by Madonna in St. Elmo’s Fire.<\/p>\n

Director Joel Schumacher allegedly gave Moore an ultimatum: Get sober or get fired.<\/p>\n

Moore chose to enter recovery and had a 24\/7 sober companion on set.<\/p>\n

Demi Moore<\/a> had to shape up in order to keep her role in St. Elmo’s Fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, director Joel Schumacher would replace her. Troubles on set had begun a couple of weeks before shooting, as costume designer Susan Becker had alerted him to the fact that Moore showed up to a fitting “drunk and high.”<\/p>\n

“Joel and [producer] Lauren Shuler [Donner] met with Demi and what Joel told me, he told her is, ‘Go kill yourself on someone else’s movie,'” Carl Kurlander, the film’s co-writer, said on the Thursday episode of Reality Life with Kate Casey<\/a>, noting that Schumacher had his own experiences with addiction. “And Lauren Shuler Donner, God bless her, worked out a plan with Joel, saying, ‘Look, if you can clean yourself up in 10 days you can be in this movie.'”<\/p>\n

Entertainment Weekly reached out to representatives for Moore for comment.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the production needed to be ready with a backup plan. While he considered several candidates to play Jules, including some existing cast members like Jenny Wright, Schumacher apparently had his eyes set on Madonna.<\/p>\n

“Joel had met Madonna. And he came back and he said, ‘This girl is going to be the biggest star in the world. I could just feel it,'” Kurlander said. “And Joel was all ready to offer the part to Madonna.”<\/p>\n

But Moore was not going to give up her chance to be in the 1985 film. She got a sober companion and began attending AA meetings, proving to Schumacher that she was serious about her recovery.<\/p>\n

“She clearly had more than just cleaned up,” Kurlander said.<\/p>\n

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Demi<\/p>\n

Demi Moore in ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’
Credit: Columbia Pictures\/courtesy Everett<\/p>\n

Moore has been open about her struggles with substance abuse in the past. In her 2019 memoir Inside Out, she wrote<\/a> that by the mid ’80s, “my appetite for cocaine had escalated into a dependency.”<\/p>\n

And in the Brats documentary in 2024, which documented the rise of the Brat Pack in the 1980s, Moore shared her perspective<\/a> on having a sober companion during St. Elmo’s Fire. She said that director Schumacher had “stuck his neck out for me” by allowing her to get better and stay in the movie.<\/p>\n

“We were all just beginning,” she said of herself and her costars. “I didn’t have anything to really warrant him sticking by me. They paid to have a sober companion with me 24\/7 during the whole shooting.”<\/p>\n

She was aware that Schumacher could recast her, so the 63-year-old was grateful to have a second chance. Moore would maintain her sobriety for over two decades before relapsing in 2012. After re-entering treatment, she has been sober ever since.<\/p>\n

“They could have easily just found someone else,” Moore said. “Going to treatment, they were like, ‘We want you to check in.’ I’m like, ‘No, no, I’m starting a movie.’ And they said, ‘Yes, but what’s more important to you: the movie or your life?’ And I said, ‘The movie! C’mon, what are you talking about?’ For me, I didn’t have any value for myself. I think I was so fearful of failing.”<\/p>\n

Listen to the full episode of Reality Life with Kate Casey above.<\/p>\n

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Points Demi Moore was nearly replaced by Madonna in St. Elmo’s Fire. Director Joel Schumacher allegedly gave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-876254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}