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CINDY PEARLMAN
NYT Syndicate
Mandy Moore was on her way into a Beverly Hills hotel, early one recent Saturday morning, when a fan stopped her.
"Please tell me ” please," the fan begged."How does he die? Heart attack? Car accident?"
She was asking about Moore's hit NBC series, 'This Is Us', on which she plays Rebecca, the wife of Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia). As the show begins its second season, fans have seen Jack's funeral, but they don't know how he dies or why Rebecca ends up with his best friend. They don't know, and they're, well, dying to find out.
"I'm asked how Jack dies about 10 times every day," Moore said good-naturedly as she settled in for an interview, wearing a rust-coloured sundress and turquoise, heart-shaped earrings, her long, brown hair flowing."Since I'm in a certain movie this summer, my current answer is simple: We went on a family beach vacation and he got eaten by a shark."
Moore is 33 now, though she looks younger, and she doesn't mind those questions. She'd be happy to hear them 100 times a day. The success of 'This Is Us' has pulled her out of a substantial career lull, so she'd learned not to take a major hit for granted.
"It's difficult being in this industry," the actress said."I've been at this since I was a teenager. What I've learned is, you ride the ebbs and flows of an acting career while trying to balance having a life.
"It's all about the ups and downs," she said."But when you do find a project that clicks ... Well, it just makes it so much sweeter."
Among the side effects of the success of 'This Is Us' may be counted the theatrical release of 47 Meters Down, the aforementioned shark-attack movie that originally looked likely to go straight to video. Instead it will open int he US on the big screen on June 16.
Moore plays Lisa, a young woman whose long-term relationship has broken up because her partner considered her boring. Desperate to prove him wrong, she takes off on a vacation in Mexico with her sister (Claire Holt). A night out dancing results in their meeting two guys who convince them to go cage-diving and swim with sharks.
Lisa, a novice scuba diver, a worrywart and a longtime victim of panic attacks, isn't so sure, asking,"Is this even safe?"
"It's like going to the zoo," she's told,"except you're in the cage."
A boat ride later, far from the shore, the ship's captain (Matthew Modine) pours buckets of animal blood into the water to attract hungry sharks. The women get into the cage, and are lowered five metres down ” only to have the cable break, sending them plummeting 47 metres down to the ocean floor, where even bigger sharks circle as the women's oxygen tanks quickly run low.
"What was enticing for me was that I'm not usually thought of for this genre," Moore said."(The script) was so compelling from start to finish. I didn't see the twists coming, and I knew that filming would be a challenge and entirely rewarding and it was."
A challenge it definitely was: During the eight-week shoot, Moore spent most of her time at the bottom of a water tank, shut up in a metal cage. She and Holt wore unusually large facemasks, allowing their facial expressions to register on camera and facilitating communication with each other and with the crew.
"I went into the movie knowing it would be physically taxing," Moore said,"but I had no idea how exhausting it would be on a daily basis. I didn't realise how much I was extending myself under the water.
"I'm not usually a napper," she added,"but on this set I'd have lunch and then go curl up and take a nap. I was just bone-tired. What I didn't know was, apparently you're not supposed to sleep right after diving."
Moore was given a crash course in diving before shooting started.
"We did two deep-water dives in the ocean, which was a bit terrifying at first," the actress admitted, shaking her head."I had never been diving and thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to spend two months breathing this way.'"
She learned that deep-water divers can't simply swim to the surface in the event of an emergency.
"You can only move up slowly," she explained,"or you could get the bends and die instantly. The thing here is that you can't be slow around killer sharks who are hunting you for their dinner."
The sharks weren't the scariest aspect of the story for Moore, however.
"What was even more terrifying for me was the thought of drowning," the actress admitted."The idea of running out of air ... I can't even go there."
It's not that Moore is a wimp. In fact, in real life television's newest favourite mom is a bit of a daredevil, with a particular taste for skydiving.
"The rush of adrenalin when you drop through the air with just a chute is unlike anything I've ever experienced," she said."As soon as I land, I want to go back up immediately and do it again."
Lucky for NBC executives' peace of mind, these days Moore doesn't really have time to indulge in that sort of risk-taking. She's about to start filming the second season of 'This Is Us', and is impatiently awaiting the first script.
"We don't go back until July," she said."We don't have any scripts yet, but I'm just as eager as everyone else to find out what happens to Jack and Rebecca, plus the rest of the family.
"And I'm just like everyone else who is trying to figure it out," Moore added,"but I'm sure I'll guess wrong. The actual figuring-it-out part is really fun."
At the end of the first season, Rebecca and Jack decided to take a break from their marriage and he moved out.
"People come up and say that they're mad at me," Moore said."Me! Listen, I didn't throw him out. Rebecca didn't make that decision on her own. It was a conscious choice made by two people that knew they were taking a break.
"He didn't fight to stay," she added."I didn't fight for him to stay either."
This multi-decade family drama has touched a nerve with television viewers, and Moore thinks she knows why.
"It just came along at the right time," she said."People are looking for positive, hopeful entertainment. Add to that our incredible writers plus such a wonderful cast.
"Above all, people are hungry for cathartic material."
Moore grew up in Orlando, Florida, as the daughter of a news reporter and an airline pilot. As a child she saw the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma and decided that she wanted to become a singer. She had the chops, and ended up singing at athletic events around her hometown.
At 14 she was recording in an Orlando studio when a Fed Ex delivery agent passing through heard her and later mentioned her to a friend at Sony Records. It wasn't long before Moore was cutting a demo and then signing a record deal.
A year later she released her first record, So Real (1999), and soon was touring with the Backstreet Boys. She also started acting, and made her Hollywood debut in The Princess Diaries (2001) before starring in such films as A Walk to Remember (2002), How to Deal (2003), Saved (2004), American Dreamz (2006), Because I Said So (2007) and License to Wed (2007).
Her biggest hit came as the voice of Rapunzel in Tangled (2010), which she has revisited on television for 'Tangled: The Series' (2017).
Moore, who is divorced from singer Ryan Adams, has been up in the world of show business and she's been down, and it has left her a realist about the whole thing.
"I do think the most important thing is finding balance in your life," the actress said."From a young age, I was keenly aware that I was lucky to be in a position where I could sing and act. I never took any of it for granted.
"I always knew it could go away at any moment," Moore said,"and it still could. But you keep sticking it out and hope that it will come around again."
