Which 2015 Oscar Winner Went to High School in Northern Virginia?

Did you watch the Oscars last night? Did you know that one of the winners has a connection to Northern Virginia?

Best Actress winner Julianne Moore, 54, attended Fairfax County’s J.E.B. Stuart High School in 1975-1976 and 1976-1977. Students back then knew her as Julie Smith.

The school is located in the Falls Church area of the county.

“I became serious with drama at J.E.B. Stuart. My first play was ’Sleeping Beauty,’” she told The Washington Post in an interview 15 years ago. I played Sleeping Beauty. It was the year I got contact lenses, so it was a big one for me.”

She has often described herself as an “Army brat,” moving and attending lots of different schools when she was growing up. She reportedly left Stuart High after her sophomore year when her family moved to Germany, where she attended and graduated in 1979 from Frankfurt American High School in Frankfurt.

Back then, she was known as Julie Smith or Julie Anne Smith, according to several news reports. Her family, according to a story in Washingtonian, calls her “Julie.” Moore is her father’s middle name. “We hoped she would be a lawyer or doctor, because she’s very bright, but she’s done all right for herself,” he told Washingtonian’s Carol Ross Joynt at a premiere for HBO’s “Game Change” held in 2012 at The Newseum. Moore portrayed Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in the film.

Moore changed her name because two other actresses in the Screen Actors Guild already had the names Julie Smith and Julianna Smith so she chose her middle name Moore as her last, according to Biography Archive. There was also another actress named Julie Moore so she had to use Julianne as her first name.

Here’s more information about Moore, courtesy of filmibeat.com and The Washington Post:

Moore’s mother, the late Anne Love Smith, was a psychiatric social worker who emigrated from Greenock, Scotland, and her father, Peter “Pete” Moore Smith, is a New Jersey native. He was a military lawyer, judge, helicopter pilot and army colonel. Moore has a younger sister, Valerie, who lives in the area, and younger brother, novelist Peter Moore Smith III.

Moore earned her bachelor’s degree at the College of Fine Arts at Boston University.

Moore has had roles in “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “The Big Lebowski,” “The Forgotten,” “The End of the Affair,” “The Hours,” “The Kids Are All Right,” and “Crazy Stupid Love.”

PHOTO courtesy of the Oscars/Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences