HBO Ready for Julianne Moore Close Up

EXCLUSIVE!!!

(Have you noticed how every bit of minutiae out of Hollywood lately is being reported as an “exclusive”? It’s pretty funny since half the stuff is stolen from other places.)

Julianne Moore opens this Friday in Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe.” She almost came thisclose to an Oscar nomination for Tom Ford’s “A Single Man.”(She has four Oscar nominations already, so it’s ok.)

But Moore is desperately wanted, I am told, by HBO and “Chloe” writer Erin Cressida Wilson.

Wilson, whose credits include edgy treats like “Fur” and “Secretary,” is busy writing a pilot for a series at HBO. The main character is a woman in her early 40s who gets up and leaves her kids and husband. The ‘why’ would be the unraveling story. And Wilson wants Moore.

“I’m crossing my fingers,” Wilson told me recently over drinks in L.A. at the Four Seasons. “She can do anything.”

Moore, meantime, is just great as a woman who’s convinced her husband is having an affair in “Chloe.” Of course, like in any Egoyan movie, all it  not what it seems. A big twist makes “Chloe” the third head scratching thriller of the season, after “Shutter Island” and “The Ghost Writer.”

Moore plays a doctor so convincingly, you actually think she could diagnose your problems. When I told her that recently, she accepted the kudos. “I did feel very authoritative,” she laughed

Moore and director husband Bart Freundlich did take in Kristen Stewart in “The Runaways” last week at the Sunshine theater premiere. Stewart is in negotiations to star with Moore in Freundlich’s “Backwoods” this summer. And that’s exclusive!