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- This article is about the Nip/Tuck character. For the English actress, see Eva Moore.
Ava Moore is a fictional character on the FX Network television series "Nip/Tuck". Played by Famke Janssen), the character was introduced during the show's second season and is one of the show's most famous villains.
Background
Ava Moore was introduced at the beginning of season two as a life-coach who is hired by plastic surgeon Sean McNamara to "motivate" his emotionally distant wife Julia into becoming a better wife to him. Unfortunately, Sean is oblivious towards the truth about Ava Moore, in that she's a predator who targets and exploits the emotionally weak in order to manipulate them for her own amusement. Upon meeting Julia, she finds that Julia's distance is due to her being attracted to Sean's best friend and business partner Christian Troy as well as the recent revelation that Christian is the father of her first-born son Matt. From there, Ava moves onto Matt and seduces the barely legal teenager into a sexual relationship. The relationship is met with scorn from Ava's own teenage son, Adrian. It is ultimately revealed that Ava's pederast tendencies extend to her own son, who is jealous of the attention his mom gives to Matt.
When Matt's relationship with Ava is exposed, Ava uses the truth about Matt's paternity to try and silence Julia but the truth ultimately comes out. Matt moves in with Ava and continues to act out, in part due to anger regarding his parents and also due to his association with Adrian, who due to his mother's sexual and emotional abuse, possesses a sociopathic personality. When he attempts to expose his mother's abuse, Ava reveals that she is not Adrian's biological mother and that Adrian is a liar. This is done prior to the two having a prior conversation about the abuse and the two having sex (with Ava clearly showing guilt towards the forced incest and Adrian begging for his "mother" to make love to him). The shock of these revelations causes Adrian to run away, further adding to Ava to suddenly become more and more depressed and withdrawn from Matt.
The Reveal
At the end of the second season of Nip/Tuck, Ava has a confrontation with Christian Troy over her relationship with Matt. During the confrontation, Ava began taunting Christian sexually, to the extent that Christian snapped and began to forcibly rape Ava. As he began to penetrate Ava (who did not want to have sex with Christian and was begging him not to do it), the sexually experienced doctor made a shocking discovery. Letting Ava go, he contacted Sean and Julia and revealed that Ava had an extremely shallow vaginal canal and had to be a transsexual. Researching Ava's history to confirm Christian's revelation, they discovered that Ava Moore was originally Avery Tanner, a homosexual male who worked as a professional escort to wealthy older women. Avery was in love with a doctor named Dr. Barrett Moore and used his charisma to convince his wealthy female dates to finance Dr. Moore's medical research.
However, to Avery's growing disappointment, Barrett Moore was a confirmed heterosexual and refused to advance his friendship with Avery to the level of a romantic relationship. This caused Avery to fall into a great depression and ultimately, one fateful night led him to ask the doctor that if he had surgery to became a woman, if he could love him the same way Avery loved Dr. Moore. Intrigued, Moore agreed and personally undertook the mission of transforming Avery into Ava. Moore's skill as a surgeon allowed him to turn turn Avery into what Christian Troy would later describe as "The Hope Diamond of Transsexuals; completely flawless in every way". Ava was happy with her new form and the two married. But problems quickly popped up, as Moore could never truly accept Ava as being a woman and instead treated her like a prized creation of his. Ava sank further and further into depression, leading to Doctor Moore to arrange for one of his female employees to become pregnant with his child so Ava could become a mother and hopefully pull the three together as a family unit.
But Ava was growing more and more cynical and angry with her husband and ultimately took their child and left in the middle of the night. Sadly, she left right before the final surgery was to be performed to make her vagina deep enough to pass for the real thing. This in turn led to her taking young lovers (including her son), since Ava believed that younger, sexually inexperienced boys would not be able to tell that her genitals were different than those of most women.
Confronted with the truth, Ava expected the worst from her enemies in terms of them exposing the truth about her and destroying her life. On the contrary though, the three were sympathetic towards Ava and together struck a deal where they would help arrange for Dr. Barrett Moore to complete the final surgery on Ava's genitals in exchange for Ava breaking off her relationship with Matt (who the three did not want to reveal the truth regarding Ava, out of fear towards how he might react).
The surgery performed, Ava broke up with Matt in an intense scene. At first Ava tries to be cruel in order to create a clean break but when Matt refuses to back down. Ava then explains to Matt that she can't stay with him because their relationship has awaken personal demons inside of her that she has to face on her own. She tells Matt to remember their relationship as Matt leaves her home.
Hours later, as Ava prepares to leave the country, Adrian confronts his "mother" while wielding a butcher's knife. After several angry moments, Adrian plunges his knife into his chest, killing him. Ava leaves her adopted son to rot as she boards a plane to Paris.
Current status
As of the end of the third season, Ava Moore remains in France and has yet to return to the United States. The character did however make a brief appearance in season three, through use of deleted scenes of Ava and Matt making love (which were editted to appear as as a dream sequence) and a hastily filmed scene where Matt (having learned the truth about Ava) imagines Ava appearing before him, cursing Matt for the feelings of hatred towards Ava now that he knew the truth and demanding that he come to terms with the fact that he still loves her even if she was born a man.
Fictional LGBT characters | Nip/Tuck characters | Femmes fatales
"Ava Moore"