Demi Moore has achieved the near impossible, a Hollywood comeback, reports Jack Mathews in New York
Demi Moore's performance as a bikini-hot fallen angel in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) returns her to Hollywood glory at age 40, putting her in a class pretty much by herself - resurrected middle-aged female superstar.

After disastrous star turns in Striptease (1996) and G.I. Jane (1997), Moore moved to Idaho to raise her children, making only one movie, the quickly forgotten Passion of Mind (2000). While she is no stranger to headlines (like the one in 1991 when she controversially posed naked on the cover of Vanity Fair while eight months pregnant), career resurrections for actresses are rare.

Consider Geena Davis. From the late 1980s to the mid-'90s, Davis not only starred in, but eventually produced her own projects. But the only movie work the 47-year-old actress has had since back-to-back action flops Cutthroat Island (1995) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) was playing the human mother of a talking mouse in the two Stuart Little movies.

If that wasn't enough to make Davis squeal, her attempted comeback with the TV sitcom The Geena Davis Show lasted only one, miserably low-rated season.

Consider Debra Winger. From Urban Cowboy (1980) until the late '80s, she was among the hottest of all actors. The noble failures of Costa-Gavras's Betrayed (1988) and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky (1990) took her off the public's radar, however, and when the good roles began to go to others, she took herself out of the game.

Winger's lone movie in the last seven years - 2001's Big Bad Love, directed by and co-starring her husband, Arliss Howard - was an art-house bomb. At 48, her coming appearances in the ensemble comedy Eulogy and as a football coach's wife in Radio do not smell of comeback.

Men have had more success. John Travolta was returned to Saturday Night Fever pitch at 40 by Pulp Fiction.

Anthony Hopkins got a new life at 53, along with fava beans and a fine chianti, in The Silence of the Lambs.

And there are a few 40-plus actresses who've never really fallen off the star list - Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, Goldie Hawn, Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep.

But consider Melanie Griffith.

Since Jonathan Demme's Something Wild in 1986, the former child star has done mostly B-grade movies.

In her next film, Shade, she co-stars with Sylvester Stallone. When you're hoping for a comeback by playing opposite someone who needs one even more, don't hold your breath.

The Daily Telegraph

Source: Press Release