'Still Alice' Star Julianne Moore on Raising Teenagers and Possibly Winning Her First Oscar: Only in PEOPLE Magazine

Moore is the frontrunner for this year's Best Actress Academy Award

Photo: Linda Kallerus/Sony Pictures Classics

Julianne Moore knows all too well how quickly the world can spin.

It feels like just a moment ago her kids – Caleb, 17, and Liv, 12 – were babies.

“Of course when they’re really little, the pace is glacial because nothing is happening and you’re sitting in a sandbox,” she says, laughing. And then “of course it flashes by, and that little boy you were putting sand in the funnel with is 17 years old and starting to look at colleges. It really does crystallize what being alive is about. It forces you to pay attention.”

All eyes are on Moore now.

While The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, in which she plays the rebellion’s President Alma Coin, topped the box office for three weeks, it’s Moore’s devastating portrayal of a college linguistics professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in the film Still Alice that made her the front-runner for the Best Actress Oscar.