Julianne Moore is in the right place as she finds herself in two movies about middle age

FAMILY TIES: Nic (played by Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) in a scene from Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are all Right. Source: Supplied

AS BEFITS an actor who has smooched everyone from Ralph Fiennes and Toni Collette to Dennis Haysbert and Amanda Seyfried, Julianne Moore is willing to kiss and tell. Remembering the details of her on-screen trysts is the tricky part.

"I'm doing this Steve Carell movie right now and I turned to the writer a few days ago and I said, 'I think this is the first movie I've done where I haven't kissed anyone'," says Moore. "and he said, 'No, you already kissed Kevin Bacon.' I said, 'Oh, my God! I forgot!"'

You can't blame Moore for the occasional memory lapse. This is a woman, after all, who's starred in movies ranging from Boogie Nights and far from Heaven to Short Cuts and this year's Chloe.

"I've kissed so many actors and actresses. So many," she says with a laugh. "and here's the thing: they're all great kissers. That's the big secret. we actors are all really good kissers."

Moore's latest partner in lip-locking is also one of her favourites. In the Kids Are all right, Moore and Annette Bening play a long-time couple whose relationship gets a jolt from an unlikely source. the story begins when the pair's 18-year-old daughter (Mia Wasikowska) and 15-year-old son (Josh Hutcherson) decide to reach out to the previously anonymous sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) who fathered them both. Moore jumped at the chance to star in the Kids Are all right even though it bears a slight resemblance to Chloe, also due out this year, which focuses on a gynaecologist (Moore) who hires a call girl (Seyfried) to test her husband's fidelity and winds up falling into bed with the young woman herself.

"It's interesting because both of these movies are about middle age, which is exactly where I am right now," says Moore, 49. "They're also both about long-term relationships. and in both movies, my character goes, 'Wait a minute. What's going on? Where am I? I've lived X number of years with this person and I don't know who I am.'

"In Chloe, she feels like her husband is having an affair and she's disappearing. In Kids, you see people who have been together for more than 20 years and there's suddenly this tension because one of them doesn't know who she is any more."

While the tone of both films couldn't be more different, they each feature Moore in revealing love scenes. the actress has a history of performing nude scenes but she insists it never gets any easier. "Everyone has a problem with (doing nudity)," she maintains.

"Everyone. You're always like, 'I don't know about this.' There's not much of me exposed in Kids. There's no body parts. but (there was) stuff exposed in Chloe."

The Kids Are all right was attractive to Moore because it provided her with the opportunity to work for writer/director Lisa Cholodenko, one of her favourite filmmakers.

Moore is one of only 11 performers to be nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress Oscars in the same year. (She was nominated for far from Heaven and the Hours in 2002 and also earned nods for the End of the Affair and Boogie Nights.)

At the heart of the Kids Are all right is a family going through tough times, and coming out the other side stronger than ever.

"the movie really highlights how important a family is, and what a long-term relationship a family is," Moore says. "To me, it's about what it means to stick it out with somebody, to forgive mistakes, to help people, to punish family members, to guide them towards growing up and leaving you after you've been so attached. It's about all of those things."

With gay marriage in the news, the Kids Are all right could have felt like a story ripped from the headlines. Instead, Cholodenko keeps the focus tight on the characters.

"I've always said that films don't influence culture as much as they reflect it," says Moore. "I think the reason we can have a movie like Kids is because these are the kinds of families we're seeing right now. This is not shocking. the fact that the movie presents everything (matter-of-factly) is, I think, ultimately very helpful.

"I recently re-read a script I'd read 15 years about about a lesbian cop who was in the closet. I told the writer, 'This is really dated. I don't think I can do it. We'd literally have to make it a period piece.' and that's great. That's a really great thing."

Moore knows better than anyone how tough it is to raise a family.

As much as she wanted to work for Cholodenko, she almost passed on the project when the producers couldn't work out a schedule that accommodated her two kids' schooling needs.

In the end, the production was delayed long enough for Bening's children to be able to go to camp in Los Angeles and Moore's children to finish school in their native new York City.

As Moore sees it, family will always be her top priority. "If somebody says, 'I've got a great movie for you, it shoots in Cologne from September through Christmas', I'd be, like, 'No, can't do it.' Simple as that," says Moore, who is married to director Bart Freundlich.

Making the Kids Are all right and playing the mother of almost-grown children got Moore thinking about how the empty-nest syndrome might impact her.

"I made all these mothers cry in my last interview because I was talking about that moment when you realise your child is going (to move away). That's a tough moment. I have a 12-year-old who will be going to college in six years. Six years goes by in a heartbeat.

"one of the things that this movie says is to really appreciate the family that you have. It talks about how valuable family is, how much we should cherish them because it's really important and it's fleeting. That's a (theme) that hit home with me."

If you happened to catch Moore this year as a guest star on TV's 30 Rock, you got a taste of what the actress has up her sleeve for 2011. after she finishes shooting an as-yet-unnamed comedy with Steve Carell and Kevin Bacon, she's ready for more funny business.

"I love comedy," says the actress. "I have a great appreciation for it and it's probably what I watch more than anything else. I said in another interview that tragedy becomes much less appealing the older that you get.

"Life is difficult. It's challenging. It's hard. People are having a hard time right now, particularly. So you think about what kinds of stories you want to tell and, right now, I think comedy is the most exciting to me."

The Kids Are all Right is released in Australia on September 2.