Parents at Wood River Middle School in Hailey, Idaho, were thrilled by the show they crowded in to watch early last month. Up onstage was a dazzling spectacle -- elaborate costumes, fabulous makeup, all the trappings befitting one of showbiz's hottest sex symbols. And we're not talking Demi Moore. No, Hailey's hometown superstar was sitting on a stiff auditorium bench, watching a friend's daughter and other sixth graders doing, among other things, their best imitations of Britney Spears. After taking it all in for two hours, Moore's youngest daughter, Tallulah, 7, was ready for bed. And so her mother -- who for more than a decade would do just about anything for attention, from posing pregnant and naked on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991 to stripping down to a bikini before a stunned David Letterman to promote Striptease in 1996 -- gave her a piggyback ride to the car. No nannies, no entourage. As one fellow parent says, "She seems like a woman who has come to see a certain degree of folly in her old ways."

Maybe, maybe not. But 11 years after she hit superstardom in the supernatural thriller Ghost, Moore, 38, is looking differently at life -- and life differently at her. Once an unabashedly ambitious actress who announced her desire to achieve "greatness" in her career -- which by 1995 had accounted for more than $1 billion in box office receipts for hits that included A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal and Disclosure -- Moore hasn't even appeared onscreen in three years (unless you count last year's low-budget thriller Passion of Mind, which no one does). And now the woman once known in the industry as Gimme Moore for her extravagant demands -- most notably jets for her crew of nannies, cook, trainer and stylist -- appears disinclined to ask for anything at all. "I had a project about a year and a half ago, and we made an inquiry about her -- a real good commercial picture," says producer Irwin Winkler, whose credits include Rocky, Goodfellas and Moore's '96 drama The Juror. "She wasn't interested."

"Just needed to stop"

Perhaps that's because while all the trainers and stylists may have made Moore look good, she didn't feel so hot. "I just needed to stop and take a break," she told IN STYLE last October. She has also dropped the grueling workouts that gave her one of the most spectacular bodies in Hollywood in favor of casual swimming and Rollerblading -- as well as running around after her two birds, two cats, two dogs and three daughters, Rumer, 12, Scout, 9, and Tallulah. "One of my goals is to build a loving relationship so that my children, as adults, will want to share their lives with me," she said to IN STYLE. "The foundation I lay -- if it's not there now, it won't be later."