Facts
Julia Roberts was introduced to the world of performance
at an early age by her theatrical parents, who
ran the Atlanta-based Actors and Writers
Workshop out of their home. She
made her screen debut opposite her
older brother Eric in Blood Red,
although the 1986-produced film went unreleased
for three years. Roberts
first gained notice playing a
fiery Portuguese waitress in Mystic Pizza
(1988) and won a Best Supporting Actress
Oscar nomination as the doomed diabetic
heroine of Steel Magnolias (1989).
With her performance as a warm-hearted
prostitute who transforms cold executive Richard Gere
in Garry Marshall's saccharine but
immensely successful rags-to-riches
saga, Pretty Woman (1990), Roberts
became one of Hollywood's most popular and bankable
stars and earned a surprise Best Actress
Academy Award nomination.
While her contribution made
the routine thrillers Flatliners
(1990) and Sleeping with the Enemy
(1991) popular successes, she faltered a bit
at the box office later in 1991
with the weepie romance Dying Young, but
her star power garnered an opening weekend
take of over $9 million. She finished
the year with the supporting
role of Tinkerbell in
Steven Spielberg's
lavish update of the Peter Pan myth, Hook. Roberts'
toothsome portrayal of the feisty fairy revealed no
insights into the tiny winged character, and she
struggled gamely with the physical and artistic
rigors of doing most of her scenes alone on a special effects soundstage.
Roberts took some time off to get
her highly publicized personal life in order:
romances with co-stars Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott
and Kiefer Sutherland all petered out, though
her romance with co-star Lyle Lovett
ended in a brief marriage. Roberts
made a cameo appearance as
herself in Robert Altman's The Player
(1992) before making her much ballyhooed
return to the screen, re-asserting her
commercial magic opposite Denzel Washington
in the political thriller The Pelican Brief
(1993), but faltered with audiences
opposite Nick Nolte in the
middling romantic comedy I Love Trouble
(1994).
Her next few film roles proved spotty:
she was passable as a journalist in Robert Altman's
high-fashion comedy Ready to Wear/Pret-a-Porter
(1994), spunky as a woman coping with
marital problems in the romantic comedy Something to Talk About
(1995), and dour in the period horror
film Mary Reilly (1996), all of which failed
to find audience favor. As Woody Allen's leading lady in
his musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You (1996),
she fared slightly better (and displayed a pleasant if not spectacular singing voice). Cast opposite old beau Neeson
as his love interest in Neil Jordan's
biopic of Irish revolutionary Michael Collins
(also 1996), Roberts gave a gallant try but was hampered by a wavering Irish accent.
1997 saw the actress re-assert her position as a
box-office performer with her starring role in the
comedy My Best Friend's Wedding.
Cast as a scheming restaurant critic who sets
out to break up the wedding of the man
she thinks she loves, Roberts
turned what could have become an unsympathetic character
into an audience favorite through the sheer
force of natural charm and vibrancy.
She was abetted by Rupert Everett's
scene-stealing supporting turn as her editor
and a subtle script by Ron Bass that inverted
many of the cliches of screwball comedy. Roberts'
much-anticipated teaming with
Mel Gibson in
Richard Donner's Conspiracy Theory
(also 1997), however, proved to be somewhat disappointing thanks to a muddled script.
Ron Bass was one of several writers
who worked on the script of Stepmom (1998),
a comedy-drama that cast Roberts
as the much younger girlfriend of a divorced man
coping with his two children and his saintly ex-wife. Most critics dismissed the film as pap but audiences lapped it up and made it
a modest box-office success. She followed with a
turn as a world-famous movie star who
falls in love with a bumbling
British bookseller (Hugh Grant)
in Notting Hill, an uneven
romantic comedy, and a re-teaming with Gere
under Garry Marshall's guidance in Runaway Bride
(both 1999). Together these films earned over
$300 million domestically justifying the
actress' standing as the highest paid female actor.
Roberts then took on the role of her
life, essaying the real-life legal
secretary who assisted in turning a
case of water poisoning into one of
the largest class-action lawsuits in
US history in Erin Brockovich (2000). Her stellar
work under the direction of Stephen Soderbergh
earned her just about every accolade, including the Best Actress Oscar.
In 2002, Roberts joined Drew Barrymore
for the George Clooney
feature Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
Roberts returned to comedy playing the
frustrated girlfriend of a
low-level, somewhat bumbling gangster (played by Brad Pitt) in "The Mexican" (2001). Although she and Pitt were not on screen together for very long, the pair shared a nice easy chemistry. The actress also had a great rapport
with James Gandolfini (as a hitman who
kidnaps her as insurance). Despite fielding many offers,
Roberts opted to play the personal
assistant to a movie star (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the
disastrous, critically reviled and box-office
impaired comedy America's Sweethearts
before reteaming with director Soderbergh
for a small role in his
remake of Ocean's Eleven
(both 2001). Robert's next project was also
with Soderbergh, in the non-narrative sequel to
his Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989);
Roberts' character was shockingly uninteresting
and unimportant to the story,
such as it was. Worse was her limp turn
in buddy George Clooney's
directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002),
the supposed life story of
game show producer/host-turned-government agent
Chuck Barris, in which she plays
a spy femme fatale in a performace so purposefully arch as to defy belief.
Roberts fared better in her next
project, Mona Lisa Smile (2003),
playing Katherine Watson, a liberal-minded
educator who takes a position at
Wellesley in the 1950s and quickly
comes under fire for teaching her
students to aspire to become
more than perfect wives for
corporate CEOs. While the film's premise and
storyline--a female spin on the
familiar Dead Poets' Society model--was
predictable, Roberts' delivered a
mature and engaging performance that, in
ways different from her previous efforts,
had the audience rooting
for her.
Roberts then returned for the
sequel Ocean's Twelve (2004), in
which--while she and George Clooney
took a backseat in favor of Brad Pitt
and Catherine Zeta-Jones, gamely playing off of her real-life pregnancy and, in a harder-to-swallow plot spin, her character's uncanny resemblence
to movie star Julia Roberts. Just prior to the release
of that film, Roberts made international
headlines when she gave birth to twins,
a boy and a girl, in November 2004. Hot on the heels
of that arrival was the debut of the
Mike Nichols-directed drama Closer (2004),
in which she plays an American photographer in
London caught up in the heated, sometimes
erotic, often cruel love/sex gender war as
amid two shifting sets of couples
(Jude Law, Natalie Portman,
Roberts and Clive Owen). The highly
literate film received mixed reviews,
though many were raves and Roberts'
performance was her most praised since Erin Brokovich.
