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"  For Julianne Moore, it&amp;#039;s always hard to be away from her family, and on this chilly winter afternoon, just returned to her home base in New York City after spending the past week in Los Angeles shooting a new movie, the actress is relishing the ordinary rituals of life with her husband, writer-director Bart Freundlich, and their two children, son Caleb, about to turn 11, and daughter Liv, 6.  &amp;quot;My son had to go to the orthodontist to have his braces off yesterday,&amp;quot; Julianne begins, after arriving at a caf\u00E9 in Greenwich Village. &amp;quot;We celebrated by chewing gum.&amp;quot; Her 48th birthday is tomorrow, her son&amp;#039;s birthday is the following day, and she is eager to share their grand plans. &amp;quot;Two months ago, apropos of nothing, my son said, &amp;#039;Mommy, for our birthdays, instead of a party, let&amp;#039;s go to Paris, just the two of us.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; She laughs, adding, &amp;quot;This is probably the last time in his life Cal will want to go somewhere alone with his mother. I was flattered and thrilled.&amp;quot;  For a movie star who consistently receives raves for her talent and beauty and is known for tackling risky, challenging roles (from a porn star in Boogie Nights to a suicidal housewife in The Hours), Julianne paints herself as a working mom who just happens to have a glamorous day job. With her signature red hair pulled back in a clip, wearing jeans, a striped gray T-shirt, and a rose gold necklace and watch, she exudes easygoing good cheer, plunging headlong into conversation. While she&amp;#039;s never met me before, she feels like she knows REDBOOK&amp;#039;s readers and is eager to catch up and confide. A Boston University graduate and a voracious reader (currently devouring Julia Glass&amp;#039;s new novel, I See You Everywhere), she talks about her weight insecurities (&amp;quot;Of course I diet for roles; everyone does&amp;quot;), the challenges of staying married (&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not easy \u2014 you can see why a lot of people give up&amp;quot;), and why she is putting her energy into raising money for Save the Children this Valentine&amp;#039;s Day, through the sale of specially designed greeting cards. How did you get involved with Save the Children? A friend of mine is their artist-ambassador person. She gets people involved. I didn&amp;#039;t realize Save the Children had a U.S. program; it reaches communities through the public school system with after-school programs in nutrition, exercise, literacy. We moved a lot when I was little because my dad was in the military, and I went to one public school after another. I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska; Fayetteville, South Carolina; Juneau, Alaska; Falls Church, Virginia. In Juneau \u2014 I&amp;#039;ve told this story many times; it was a formative experience for me \u2014 there was a girl in my class. She looked different, very small for her age, very thin, eyes very wide; there was something wrong but no one knew what. I now realize she had fetal alcohol syndrome. It makes me want to cry. I look at our public school system and think there&amp;#039;s so much we can do to pick up the slack. So now I&amp;#039;m Save the Children&amp;#039;s U.S. ambassador. Why use valentines to raise money? Last year we took a trip to Appalachia, and on the way back I came up with this Valentine&amp;#039;s Day program. We used kids&amp;#039; art. I was inspired by UNICEF; I wanted the campaign to be about kids doing something for other children in the U.S. \u2014 let&amp;#039;s raise the awareness of children about U.S. poverty. You can do something by buying these valentines \u2014 no matter how small a donation you&amp;#039;re making, it will go to other kids. Valentine&amp;#039;s Day has become primarily a children&amp;#039;s holiday; as mothers, we buy all these eff-ing valentines! [Laughs] We&amp;#039;re the ones who go to drugstores and buy them and fill them out. This year, I e-mailed illustrators and artists I admire and asked them each to donate art for a valentine, and I got this amazing response. Is Valentine&amp;#039;s Day a romantic holiday for you? Does Bart bring home roses? No, I don&amp;#039;t know anybody who does that! He&amp;#039;ll maybe get me flowers, maybe we&amp;#039;ll go out. It&amp;#039;s more important for us to make time to see each other during the year. We went out last night and saw the movie Milk. We don&amp;#039;t schedule it, but we make an effort to have some time alone. It&amp;#039;s hard.  You&amp;#039;ve been together a decade? Twelve years. Was it love at first sight? It was a movie-set romance. I&amp;#039;d never had a movie-set romance before and I was enjoying myself, but I didn&amp;#039;t take it seriously. After The Myth of Fingerprints ended, I thought, Let&amp;#039;s see if it goes on. I was in L.A.; he was in New York. I&amp;#039;d visit him during breaks, then he&amp;#039;d come visit me. It just kept going.  I&amp;#039;ve been married to the same man forever, but it feels like I&amp;#039;ve been married to 10 different men because the relationship changes so much. Is it the same for you? That&amp;#039;s the thing. I was talking to a friend of mine today about marriages. Everybody I know now has been with the same husband for the same amount of time. I don&amp;#039;t think you understand the ramifications of a long-term relationship, how elastic it can be, how much you can change within it, what it means to really love somebody. At 18 you think, I could be with this boy or that boy. There are a lot of people, but not a lot of people you&amp;#039;re going to love. I was saying to my husband the other day, &amp;quot;What makes people get divorced in their 60s? At that point, do you think, I&amp;#039;ve had it, that&amp;#039;s enough?&amp;quot;  You moved a great deal with your parents. Are your kids portable? Do you take them to movie sets? They&amp;#039;re not portable at all. I try to work in the summer, or shoot in New York City. I&amp;#039;ll try to come back every weekend, or schedule around school breaks. No one likes it, but you&amp;#039;re trying to make a living. People say, &amp;quot;Then don&amp;#039;t do it,&amp;quot; but I do have a career. Every woman I know strives for flexibility, and I fortunately have a tremendous amount of it. Bart has stuff he&amp;#039;s got to do too. We are definitely co-parents. Spouses often stake out different roles: She cooks; he programs the VCR. How does it work in your household? I refuse to do anything sports-oriented or deal with the VCR or Wii. I cannot turn the Wii on and I refuse to learn. Bart can do all that. I&amp;#039;m the one who cleans. He&amp;#039;s a better cook. I like things that are all in one pot \u2014 when you have to time stuff and get it all on the table, that makes me crazy. I don&amp;#039;t like anything fancy either. I make basic foods: roasted vegetables, chicken, tofu, stuff my kids would eat, but not anything I&amp;#039;d invite people over for. [Laughs] I wouldn&amp;#039;t dare. But I&amp;#039;m a very good decorator; I decorate my friends&amp;#039; apartments.  Who&amp;#039;s the disciplinarian in your house? We both are. But I think moms and dads get angrier at different things. When I talk to other mothers, they say that sometimes dads get mad at things that kids can&amp;#039;t help. If a kid is having a tantrum, dads will be, &amp;quot;Stop that right now.&amp;quot; Moms will be like, &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s out of control. You can&amp;#039;t discipline; you have to find a way to contain it.&amp;quot; Whereas moms get angry if someone breaks a rule. The rule is: Don&amp;#039;t wipe dirty hands on the wall, and dads will say, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s the big deal? Did you feel like you needed an owner&amp;#039;s manual when you had kids?  My mother-in-law once said a wonderful thing to me. When I was pregnant with a boy, I thought, I don&amp;#039;t know anything about boys. I&amp;#039;m very female-identified; I don&amp;#039;t know what to do. She said, &amp;quot;Julie, it doesn&amp;#039;t happen all at once.&amp;quot; It was great advice: You&amp;#039;re not giving birth to someone who is going to sit up and say, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m turning on SportsCenter.&amp;quot; You have time to figure out who that child is, what he&amp;#039;s like, how boys socialize, how boy babies turn into boy toddlers. You get it a little at a time. Are there ways in which your parenting strategies have changed? You do learn a tremendous amount of patience. Children&amp;#039;s pace is glacial, and you can&amp;#039;t change that. Literally, just walking down the street with them, I thought I was going to tear my hair out, but that&amp;#039;s where they are. It&amp;#039;s not difficult to take care of a child; it&amp;#039;s difficult to do anything else while taking care of a child. Trying to clean up the kitchen after you&amp;#039;ve had a baby is a nightmare. You have to wait for the baby to be asleep, you&amp;#039;re exhausted, you don&amp;#039;t want to clean up the kitchen now. My kids still don&amp;#039;t like me to read the newspaper in the morning. I&amp;#039;ll be making their breakfast, and I&amp;#039;ll have The New York Times there and want to read it, and they&amp;#039;ll be like, &amp;quot;Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.&amp;quot;  You&amp;#039;ve talked a bit about Caleb. What&amp;#039;s your daughter, Liv, like? She&amp;#039;s incredible, so smart. She&amp;#039;s in first grade. I have these pictures of her at kindergarten, I&amp;#039;m sitting on a chair and she&amp;#039;s sitting on my lap and I&amp;#039;m talking in her ear and she looks so worried. Kindergarten is the hardest for me \u2014 that&amp;#039;s the year I cry. I walk out of that classroom and I burst into tears. They&amp;#039;re entering the school world. Did your husband want children as much as you did? My son was a surprise \u2014 although I&amp;#039;d wanted a baby forever; my whole life, a baby was one thing I really wanted to have happen \u2014 but my daughter was planned. Bart was the one who said to me, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to have another baby.&amp;quot; You two weren&amp;#039;t married? No. Cal was 5 and Liv was 16 months when we got married.  Did Bart propose to you? Yes, it was a complete surprise. He gave me an engagement ring that has both of our children&amp;#039;s names in it. He said because they came first, they should be in the ring. Did you feel different after marriage? You do feel different. You&amp;#039;ve made a decision. The thing about having a child with somebody, you know, is, &amp;quot;I will know this person the rest of my life.&amp;quot; But when you marry them, you know you will be with someone the rest of your life. We got married in our backyard and had dinner in the house. We&amp;#039;ve been together since April of 1996; we married in August of 2003. You&amp;#039;ve written a children&amp;#039;s book, Freckleface Strawberry, and I understand you are working on a sequel. When I was 7, these kids in the alley behind our house in Omaha called me Freckle-face Strawberry. I hated my freckles and I hated that name. I thought it was humiliating and hated it in the way that only a 7-year-old could hate it.  My son was 7 when I wrote the book, and 7 is just when kids start to notice that they&amp;#039;re different; they start not liking themselves physically. When I read the book to kids, the kids who respond are 6 or 7. They&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;quot;My ears are very big. My dad has big ears too.&amp;quot; They&amp;#039;ll start to tell you stuff. There are a lot of stories about kids overcoming obstacles \u2014 the ugly duckling grows up and becomes a swan. Well, my freckles are still here and I still hate them. And that&amp;#039;s okay, and okay for a kid to know too. I have another book coming out this spring, Freckleface Strawberry and the Dodgeball Bully, which is all about my experience hating dodgeball. The biggest gift you can give children is self-confidence. Were you self-confident as a kid? No, my family moved too often. It&amp;#039;s impossible for a child to feel good about himself if he moves too often. It&amp;#039;s just a given. It is devastating; it&amp;#039;s really hard. Does that give you a yearning for connection, to stay in the same house, for rituals? I&amp;#039;ve derived a great deal of comfort from having a history here in New York City since 1983, other than the four years I lived in L.A. There&amp;#039;s so much that you remember, even though things change so much. My kids feel nurtured here. Describe a typical night at the Moore-Freundlichs. We come home; we tend to eat really early \u2014 at 6, I&amp;#039;m starving. My son does his homework; my daughter does pretend homework because she likes to be with her brother. At 7:30 I give her a bath, then we put them to bed. They&amp;#039;re allowed to watch TV only on weekends. Then they go down, 8:30 for her, 9 for him, though sometimes it winds up being later. Then you get on the Internet. And before you know it, it&amp;#039;s suddenly midnight. You [find yourself] pushing back your alone time. After you put the kids to bed, those hours [for you] just evaporate. What do you love most about acting?  The stories. My whole life, my whole personality, my whole raison d&amp;#039;\u00EAtre is about reading stories. It changes your life. It&amp;#039;s why I&amp;#039;m obsessed with literacy and children. It&amp;#039;s how you learn to want different things and realize that you&amp;#039;re part of a collective consciousness and community. When you read, you don&amp;#039;t feel like you&amp;#039;re alone. Do you like the transformation when you&amp;#039;re on the red carpet in an evening gown, the fairy princess element? I don&amp;#039;t mind it. Sometimes it&amp;#039;s really fun. When it&amp;#039;s most fun for me is when it&amp;#039;s editorial, posing for magazines, since I don&amp;#039;t have any obligation to be that person. When I go to a movie premiere and have to be very dressed up, it feels like there&amp;#039;s a disconnect between who I am and who I am dressed up. That doesn&amp;#039;t feel authentic to me, because I&amp;#039;m not that way. I&amp;#039;m not particularly glamorous. I love sweaters and jeans more than a fancy gown. I don&amp;#039;t feel real. But it is great to celebrate. And speaking of celebrating, you&amp;#039;ll be 48 tomorrow. How are you feeling about that? One of the gifts of being the age I am is the realization that I&amp;#039;m not thinking, In five years I&amp;#039;ll be doing this. Not to sound like an aphorism, but no matter where you are in your life, you have to try to be as present as you can be. I remember being a teenager and thinking to myself, I&amp;#039;m going to be out of here soon. When you&amp;#039;re younger, you&amp;#039;re always working for something, and now you realize, this is really it. You&amp;#039;d better be enjoying this, because this is pretty good. BE A CHILD&amp;#039;S VALENTINE Save the Children, Julianne Moore, and her artist friends (including illustrators such as LeUyen Pham and Ian Falconer) have collaborated to create adorable valentines. Proceeds help kids in our country&amp;#039;s neediest areas. At savethechildren.org, buy a box of 28 cards for $25 or download designs and send them as e-cards for free \u2014 though wouldn&amp;#039;t you rather make a donation? Don&amp;#039;t miss our exclusive video interview with Julianne, behind the scenes at her cover shoot. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a4649/julianne-moore-family-life/>