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The blond hair was her idea.

Renowned redhead Julianne Moore was preparing to play a character called Doctor's Wife in the film adaptation of Blindness, currently shooting at the (now-defunct) Ontario Reformatory in Guelph, an hour or so west of Toronto.

Moore had read the script by Don McKellar, as well as the prize-winning novel by Jose Saramago, so she knew the story well.

She knew that it begins when a mysterious, highly contagious virus renders people blind. "No pain. A sea of white," as one character puts it.

That the government quarantines the sick, but civilization breaks down when the guards and officials go blind, too.

That her character is immune, but keeps her sightedness a secret so that she can stay with her husband, Doctor (Mark Ruffalo), and their makeshift family, including Dark Glasses (Alice Braga, niece of actress Sonia Braga), Man with Black Eye Patch (Danny Glover), Receptionist (Susan Coyne) and Woman with Insomnia (Martha Burns). Sandra Oh plays Minister of Heath, and McKellar himself plays Thief.

Moore also knew that as time passes, Doctor's Wife comes to feel increasingly isolated. "She'd almost rather be blind," the actor said last week, over lunch in her trailer in the prison's parking lot. "The last thing anybody wants to be is different. So I thought red hair would make her look too strong, too different.

"And blond is about leisure, money, maintenance. I was adamant about it." She laughs. "And what doctor's wife have you ever known who hasn't been blond?"

Any good actress will plan her character's look. But not many would have the conviction to dye her hair without first getting the approval of her director - in this case, the Brazilian-born Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener).

"She sent me an e-mail to avoid the shock," Meirelles tells me later, chuckling. "But it's really working well. We gave her a wardrobe that's the same colour as her skin and her hair, so she's like a pale angel."

Moore certainly stands out in the prison, a depressing location to begin with, made worse by the filth lining the halls. "Usually in films the garbage is tattered," Meirelles says, "but in the images from the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, all the litter was new - backpacks, CD players, shoes. So that's what we used here." Not to mention the human waste heaped in corners and smeared on the walls. ("Have you seen the chocolate pooh?" Martha Burns asks. "They put out fresh piles every few days.")

"But Julianne herself is very down to earth," Meirelles continues. "She's the anti-star. There hasn't been a single second of complaining or asking for quiet. It's always, 'Let's do it,' and 'Let's do it again.' She's a joy."

Moore sure lines up for her lunch like everybody else, piling her tray with salad, grilled vegetables, a hunk of salmon, and then more vegetables stir-fried with tofu.

"Oh, Julianne, I just saw one of your movies on the plane, the one with Nicolas Cage?" says the actress ahead of her in line, referring to the action-adventure pic Next.

"Oh, I never saw that one," Moore says. Her nose wrinkles slightly.

The atmosphere inside her trailer is the polar opposite of the set: clean, giggly, and crawling with two nannies, three children (Moore's son Cal, 9, and daughter Liv, 5 - the spitting image of her mama - plus, for a bit, Ruffalo's son, Keen, 6), and one dog, Moore's black Lab.

Copies of the children's book Moore just wrote (due out this fall), Freckleface Strawberry, lie on the table. (The title, and everything the kids in the book say about freckles - including "You look dirty" and "Can I smell them?" - are things other children said to Moore when she was young.) Her kids babble about their morning, beg for chips and pop (denied), then go off: Liv to have her nails polished by the film's makeup artist, Cal to play soccer with the crew.

Moore and family - her husband, director Bart Freundlich, who is shooting a TV project, comes and goes - are renting a house in nearby Kitchener, complete with pool and swing set, a far cry from their chic townhouse in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The kids take swimming and tennis lessons, and Liv has already announced that she wants to live here forever.

"It's paradise because of all the amusement parks," Moore says. "Wonderland, Centre Island, African Lion Safari, Bingemins Water Park - have you been there? We've been there." She laughs. "We've hit them all!" She's a regular at the Conestoga Mall, and has visited the Kitchener Farmer's Market and the one in tiny St. Jacob's.

"We went to the Mennonite Museum, and I forced the kids to go to the broom store," Moore says. "My son said" - here she adopts the tone of an indignant nine-year-old - " 'I feel like we're doing a lot of things that you want to do.' I said, 'You're right, and if I were really mean, I'd make you go to the quilt store, too.' They were like, 'Noooo, Mommm!' But it was okay, because they both got horseshoes."

The kids keep Moore from taking the grimness of the Blindness story home. "I can't even take it to lunch, as you saw," she says. "And honestly, it's great. Having kids forces you to compartmentalize. And I couldn't be away this long without them. We're all too miserable.

"I'm so fortunate, because every working parent is looking for some kind of flexibility. I also think it's good to show them that work isn't something you have to disappear into; it's part of your life."

On set, she keeps sane by making a lot of jokes. "Everyone does," she says. "In one scene, we were burying a body, and Alice got her heel stuck and started laughing - shaking with laughter, but it was okay, because it looked like she was sobbing. People are serious, but they're not precious about it. You can't be.

"It's especially nice to be telling a story that has so much content," she continues. "I think it's what we need right now, stories about people who take responsibility. I keep thinking about what everybody's going through in Iraq, and how cavalier the President of the United States is. It's shocking. How does he sleep? Honestly, how does he sleep?"

Working on this film, Moore often wonders what she'd be like in an extreme situation. "I don't know if I'd be noble," she says. "My first thought would be my husband, children, dog, everyone who was just in my trailer. After that, I don't know."

The production will leave Guelph soon, and head to South America. Moore will detour back to New York to get Liv settled in kindergarten at the same neighbourhood school where Cal goes.

And the actor's ready to be a redhead again.

"Personally, I hate being blond," she says. "It's not who I am." And talk about grim: "Now they're even darkening my roots."

jschneller@globeandmail.com

Selected films

Children of Men (2006)

Freedomland (2006)

Laws of Attraction (2004)

The Hours (2002)

Far from Heaven (2002)

Hannibal (2001)

Magnolia (1999)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Boogie Nights (1997)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Nine Months (1995)

Short Cuts (1993)