Once upon a time, New Yorker writer Tad Friend wrote an essay called "Notes on the Death of the Celebrity Profile." It was about how publicists had bullied — and magazine editors had crumpled — to the point that writers were given such a limited amount of time with celebrities, their resulting portraits were as realistic a rendering of the actual subjects as the Simpsons are of human beings and blah blah blah Gay Talese. This essay appeared a long time ago, so long ago that it cannot even really be Googled. But although Friend was right about so many things, his thesis proved incorrect, because celebrity profiles haven't died. They are, in a way, undead — strange, hollow-eyed zombies that occasionally leap out at you from the pages of magazines. Yesterday we spotted one by former Vanity Fair writer Kevin Sessums in Parade. In it, a "famished" Julianne Moore orders a pair of fried eggs — eggs which go on to reveal a formidable amount of her personality:

As Moore swirls a bit of her sunny-side-up yolks, the yellow combines with the richness of the light on her mass of auburn curls and reminds me of the colors so favored by artist Vincent van Gogh. As in his landscapes, there is an earthy yet ethereal quality to Moore.

Yes.

Further insights ensue.

"Emotionally I am very brave," Moore says of herself. "I really enjoy exploring emotional boundaries. But the things that terrify me are physical. I really am a physical coward. When I feel I am brave is when I ride a snowmobile, like when my family and I were visiting some friends in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I thought, 'I cannot do this.' I really thought I was going to die."

Hardly necessary emphasis ours. Why does Julianne Moore have to be brave, you ask? We would tell you, but we had to stop reading and run away before this article tried to eat our brains.

Julianne Moore, Braver Than Ever [Parade]