

“I had a lot of nine-to-five jobs before I realized I needed to pretend to be creative.”
The next time I saw Moore, we had breakfast before a looping session for “Freeheld,” a movie directed by Peter Sollett, in which she plays Laurel Hester, a lesbian police officer who is dying of cancer and fighting the Ocean County, New Jersey, Board of Chosen Freeholders to allow her pension benefits to be transferred to her girlfriend. The film, which will be released in October, is based on a 2007 Oscar-winning documentary of the same title, and co-stars Ellen Page as Laurel’s lover.
At first, Moore said, she couldn’t understand the character she was playing: “I didn’t know who she was. I could see Laurel in the documentary. I could see Laurel in the script. But there wasn’t any corollary. I was having a hard time.” Her research led her to Ocean County and to the real Laurel’s girlfriend, Stacie Andree, who showed Moore photographs of Laurel that no one else had seen. “Laurel had this beautiful blond hair, somewhat Farrah Fawcetty,” Moore said. “When they did the documentary, she’d already lost it through chemo. Once I saw how she’d looked, I understood. It was just from the look. You don’t know when you start doing the work what you’re gonna find. Or how to find it. A very small thing can lead to a big thing.” Moore took out her iPhone and scrolled through photos of Stacie and Laurel and then her own startling transformation for the role. In the photo, Moore, in a wig, had disappeared into the character; she was unrecognizable.
As we set off for the recording session, at the Harbor Picture Company, in the Village, Moore blushed and said, “I’m probably going to let you stay for, like, half an hour. I don’t want you to get in my way. Because you will. You’ll take up mental space, and I need to have focus.” In the recording studio, a lectern had been set up for Moore, facing the front wall, which was a movie screen. On it were neatly typed pages of the words and sounds to be re-voiced. Eliza Paley, the supervising dialogue editor, sat at a desk to the left. Peter Sollett and I took our seats on a beat-up, dun-colored sofa, just below the sound-booth window. “He’s only going to stay for a little while,” Moore said to Sollett. “Don’t say anything embarrassing.” Then she scrutinized the first page of lines—“Funny,” “Damn it,” “Where’d they go?,” “Got it.” The scene in question was played on the screen. Amid a barrage of expletives, Laurel gave chase to a couple of villains. “I think it’s better as ‘Where’d they go?’ and then ‘Damn it.’ ‘Where’d they go. Shit. Damn it,’ ” Moore said. “That’s too many. Shit. Damn it.”
“It seems like ‘Damn it’ should be the TV line,” Sollett said. “We don’t think that ‘Damn it’ will get us booted off of network TV?”
“It’s fine,” Bobby Johanson, the recording mixer, kicked in from the sound booth.
“You know what? Let’s just take it out,” Moore said. The line was replayed a few times. “It’s a little raspy. Let me try another one,” she said, finally nailing it.
Then she addressed the issue of recording the appropriate grunts for Laurel as she is pushed to the ground in a scuffle. After the first try, Paley said, “That’s more like winded. It’d be good to have a variation.”
“I think you need an impact. That’s what’s missing. I think it should be”—Moore grunted—“and you should hear the thump on the ground of the body. I think it’s better to hear the body hit, right? Don’t you? Let me give you another. See, John,” she added. “It’s all fun and games.”
“This is the art,” Sollett said.