When a mass shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School took the lives of 20 kids back in 2012, the barbarousness and inhumanity of it caused parents around the world to shield their families’ eyes from their TV screens. And actress Julianne Moore was no exception.
The Oscar winner and mom of two did her best to keep her kids far away from the news cycle — particularly her then-11-year-old daughter, Liv Freundlich. But Moore simply couldn’t stop that from happening, as she told InStyle before the Tory Burch show during New York Fashion Week.
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“After Sandy Hook, I spent the entire day trying to keep the news away from her, because she was just 11 years old. And then I realized one of her friends had told her about the incident. She saw it on an Instagram post when she had a very monitored Instagram. She said, ‘Mommy, did a bunch of little kids get shot today?'” Moore said. “That’s when you realize you’re not protecting your children. You’re not doing them any favors by keeping, by shielding them from this news. The only thing that protects them is to do something about this. So I speak about [gun safety] very, very frankly with my children.”
The failure to stop Liv from hearing the news changed Moore’s perspective entirely, sparking her involvement with Everytown for Gun Safety, where she calls for an end to gun violence through activism as a founding chairperson of their creative council.
“Basically I felt like I wasn’t being a responsible citizen or a responsible parent if I wasn’t doing something about the issue of gun violence in the United States. So I gathered all these people in the entertainment industry who were kind of willing to speak out against gun violence,” she said. “It’s interesting because my daughter and I went down to the Mom’s Demand conference this July, and there were 1,200 people there. The very first conference I think five years ago, there were 60 people. Last year there were 500. So it’s a movement that’s growing in size and in influence, and that’s very exciting.”
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She’s not the only one in the Hollywood sphere getting involved in a tense political realm. The designer du jour herself, Tory Burch, is also reaching out to enact change, though her focus is on partnering with Yara Shahidi’s foundation Eighteenx18 to get more young people to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. And Burch has got Moore’s full support.
“If you think about what really, really makes a difference in terms of how we live, it’s government. That’s what changes everything, that’s what America is based on. This is a government by the people, for the people, and unless people participate, it is not ours,” Moore said.
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“I think it’s important to impress that upon young people particularly who may be voting for the very first time. It’s an exciting time, I think people are hopefully beginning to find their voices, realizing how important it is. We’re already seeing some interesting results as the midterms approach. I’m so impressed that Tory’s doing this.”
Click here to get more information about Everytown for Gun Safety, and here to learn about Eighteenx18.
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