After quitting school, Moore went to work as a pin-up girl, modelled for European photographers, and worked at a collection agency. In the early 1980s, Moore posed for a series of photographs for Christopher Marrin featuring full frontal nudity. These photos went unnoticed until after she became a star, and were eventually published in a German magazine and later in North America. Moore's film debut was in the 1982 3-D science fiction/horror film, Parasite, which was a hit on the drive-in circuit, ultimately grossing $7 million. However, Moore was not widely known until she played the part of Jackie Templeton on the ABC soap opera, General Hospital, from 1982-1983. Appropriately, she also had an uncredited cameo at the end of the 1982 spoof Young Doctors in Love.

In the mid-1980s, she appeared in the youth-oriented films St. Elmo's Fire and About Last Night, and she was often listed as one of the Brat Pack, a name the media dubbed a certain group of top young actors at the tim