Actress Julianne Moore surprised her colleagues on the set of her new film, Blindness, by showing up with her hair unexpectedly dyed blonde.

The 47-year-old Academy Award nominee is, of course, almost as famous for her red hair and pale skin as for her penchant for demanding roles.

In Blindness, which opens here tomorrow, she plays the devoted wife of a doctor (played by Mark Ruffalo) and the only person who can see in a city ravaged by a strange plague that has caused everyone to go blind.

Despite her critically acclaimed resume, the actress was charmingly down to earth in person.

At the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Blindness was the opening film and contended for the prestigious Palme d'Or prize, which eventually went to the French movie Entre les murs (The Class), Moore confessed to an attack of stage fright at one of film's most glamorous events.

'I really loved my dress last night,' she said of the Lacroix couture ensemble she wore to her film's gala. 'But I was so nervous, I thought I would swallow my own tongue. I swear, it's very intense.'

She was much more comfortable in a casual red floral dress, which she readily confessed was her own, when she met the press the next day. The whirlwind two days on the French Riviera were a break from normal routine for her, she added.

These days, Moore tries to find work in New York, where her family lives, or do projects in summer, when her children are out of school and can join her on location.

'My kids think Canada is paradise. We had a house with a pool that was near the park,' she said wryly. She has two children, Caleb, 10 and Liv, six, with film-maker and second husband Bart Freundlich, 38. They met when he directed her in the 2005 romantic comedy he wrote, Trust The Man.

Family is very important to Moore, a former 'army brat' born to a military lawyer father and social worker mother. So she tries to keep projects close to home.

She said: 'A movie I just did, Shelter, was shot in Pittsburgh, which was tough. But it was only six weeks, so I came home on weekends. It's hard so Bart and I try not to work at the same time.'

Her kids were also an inspiration for her newfound second career as a children's book writer. Freckleface Strawberry, a cute, semi-autobiographical story about a young red-haired girl learning to love her body, was scribbled on a flight to London and a second book in the series will be out next May.

She said: 'It's been fun and it's nice to do it for my kids.'

Her movies, on the other hand, have seldom been kid-friendly. Blindness is no exception, as it explores the disintegration of social order in a quarantine camp for plague sufferers.

Moore said: 'Blindness is a fable, about an imaginary situation and how people react. My character is ordinary. She's not a hero and has weaknesses. She's always struggling and she does help other people, but she doesn't save the world.'

Which brought her back to the unexpected hair-dye job. She explained that she thought the colour suited her character: 'In America, the typical thing is the doctor's wife tends to be a blonde, especially one who is not a natural blonde, because she'd have the time and money to maintain the look.'

But the usually low-maintenance actress added with a laugh: 'Personally, I didn't like it and I wouldn't do it again. It was a pain in the neck.'

Physical transformation, for some actors, is vital for getting into character.

But Moore said self-deprecatingly she has come to realise that that is not her schtick: 'I talked about it with (The End Of The Affair co-star) Ralph Fiennes because we both really worked hard at it.

'Then we watched the movie and we thought, 'Oh, it's still me, I didn't change'. It's disappointing when you think you've actually changed your face and then you realise, damn it, you haven't.'

Nonetheless, she has created something of a niche in playing the psychological nuances of repressed, emotionally charged women in such diverse fare as the period love story The End Of The Affair (1999) and the melodrama Far From Heaven (2002).

But the modest actress confessed she did not expect her own longevity in show business.

'Yeah, I'm surprised. And I'm happy, too. The goal for most of us actors, when we start out, is just to get a job, and then to have jobs that you like. I've been really fortunate that's happened to me and that I've also worked with some extraordinary film-makers.'

But what keeps her rooted seems to be her real-life role as a mother. She talked about finding playmates for her son, who loves soccer, and inspiring her children to find their own paths in life.

An early first step would be negotiating elementary school.

'One of the things they always tell kids in school is to write a story,' she mused.

'Now that my kids can see that I've written a book, they'll see that they can do it, too.'

» Blindness opens in cinemas tomorrow.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Oct 22, 2008.