As actress Andie MacDowell’s and former model Paul Qualley‘s daughter, Margaret Qualley’s movie-star good looks are in her genes; however, she admitted that in 2024’s The Substance, her other, ahem, assets all but stole the show.
”I think my butt got more screen time than my face,” the actress joked in an Thursday, April 17, cover interview with i-D magazine.
Ironically, The Substance delves into the disturbing self-torment women endure in pursuit of an unattainable ideal of perfection. Through a blend of camp, body horror and feminine rage, the film starkly reveals the ugliness underlying our culture’s obsession with beauty.
The narrative centers on Elisabeth (Demi Moore), an aging TV fitness instructor offered the chance to transform into a superior, younger and more “beautiful” version, Sue (Margaret).
In the film, the change necessitated a bi-weekly alternation between the two selves. However, the process intensifies the dysphoria of both women, igniting envy and initiating a destructive cycle of self-punishment with no victors.
To become Sue, Margaret, 30, explained that her preparation for the role was predominantly physical, which involved working with a trainer. As she told the publication, she did “a lot of yoga to try to get my body to be as symmetrical as possible, to feel almost newborn.”
The actress’s description came off as all the more apt considering that her character crawls out of Moore’s spine, much like the act of childbirth.
Margaret went on to say that the film’s unvarnished depiction of overt eroticism helped her embody the role, even as Sue functions as a pointed satire of the unattainable beauty norms.
“I was 28, having to play perfect,” Margaret noted. Adding: “It’s a part of a larger story. It’s OK if you hate me. In fact, you’re meant to.”
Not that Margaret isn’t accustomed, or rather trained, in the art of perfection, having spent much of her youth practicing to be a professional ballerina before pivoting to modelling and eventually acting. “Ballet, specifically, is so much about being perfect. It’s about control, and there really is a right way to do things,” she shared with i-D.
“I feel like my part in The Substance was my Saturn return,” she continued. “It was dealing with everything I’d grown up dealing with for my entire life in this big, meaty way, but having the chance to do it differently than when I was 16 and modeling. I wasn’t nice to myself.”
The performance was ultimately a full-circle moment, as it led her back to the world of dance, with her featuring in a choreographed number onstage at the 2025 Academy Awards in March.
“It was nuts because Mandy Moore — the choreographer, not Mandy Moore the actress — is somebody who [growing up] I would drive three hours to Atlanta to take her class and I used to dance my little ass off trying to get her attention so that she’d bring me up on stage,” she explained.
“Then, cut to 20 years later, I finally got her attention, and it was just so surreal and so f***ing fun.”
