Oscar Profile #630: Julia Roberts Revisited

Born October 28, 1967 in Smyrna, Georgia to Betty Lou and Walter Grady Roberts, one-time actors and playwrights who ran an acting school in Decatur, Georgia when she was born, Julia Roberts’ mother’s maternity bill was paid for by Coretta Scott King in gratitude to Julia’s father, her daughter Yolanda’s acting coach.

Following in the footsteps of her older brother, Eric, and sister, Lisa, Roberts made her first acting appearance in a 1987 episode of TV’s Crime Story. Her first starring role was on screen in 1988’s Mystic Pizza. The following year she won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Steel Magnolias. The year after that she won a second Golden Globe and a second Oscar nomination for Pretty Woman.

Roberts’ subsequent 1990s films include Flatliners, Sleeping with the Enemy, Dying Young, Hook, The Player, The Pelican Brief, I Love Trouble, Ready to Wear, Mary Reilly, Michael Collins, Everyone Says I Love You, My Best Friend’s Wedding (her third Golden Globe nomination), Conspiracy Theory, Stepmom, Notting Hill (her fourth Golden Globe nomination) and Runaway Bride. 2000’s Erin Brockovich brought her a fifth Golden Globe nomination and a third win as well as her third Oscar nomination and first win.

Briefly engaged to Steel Magnolias co-star Dylan McDermott, Roberts was also linked romantically to actors Jason Patric, Liam Neeson, Matthew Perry and Kiefer Sutherland to whom she was later engaged, breaking up with him just days before their planned wedding in 1991. She subsequently married singer Lyle Lovett in 1993, divorcing him in 1995. She had a four-year relationship with Benjamin Bratt from 1997-2001, then married cinematographer Danny Moder in 2002, with whom she has four children.

Roberts’ films in the first decade of the new millennium include Ocean’s Eleven, Closer, Ocean’s Twelve, Charlie Wilson’s War (her sixth Golden Globe nomination) and Duplicity (her seventh Golden Globe nomination).

In the 2010s, Roberts starred in such films as Eat Pray Love, Larry Crowe, Mirror Mirror and August: Osage County for which she received her eighth Golden Globe nomination and fourth Oscar nomination. She has subsequently starred in the TV version of The Normal Heart and on the big screen in Secret in Their Eyes, Money Monster, Wonder, and Ben Is Back.

Roberts subsequently received additional Golden Globe nominations for TV’s Homecoming (2018) and Gaslit (2022).

Back on the big screen in a starring role in 2022’s Ticket to Paradise, Julia Roberts remains a major star at 55.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989), directed by Herbert Ross

The title refers to a group of women who hang out at the local beauty parlor in a small Louisiana town. Sally Field is the mother of a young woman (Roberts) who is about to be married. Dolly Parton is the owner of the shop. Among the customers are bickering Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis. Daryl Hannah is the new girl who comes to town to work for Dolly. Classified as a comedy/drama in the vein of MacLaine’s Oscar-winning Terms of Endearment like that film, it turns dark when Roberts is diagnosed with a life-threatening situation. Robets was the only cast member nominated for an Oscar.

PRETTY WOMAN (1990), directed by Garry Marshall

A Cinderella story about a wealthy businessman played by Richard Gere who hires a prostitute (Roberts) as an escort and falls in love with her, this was the huge hit that made Roberts’ career, earning her a second Oscar nomination, her first in the lead category. It’s all rather silly but put over with such charm that you don’t mind being caught up in it. Gere and Hector Elizondo as the most accommodating hotel manager you’ve ever seen are also quite good. Except for the following year’s Frankie & Johnny, director Garry Marshall never made as good a film despite year of trying.

MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING (1997), directed by P.J. Hogan

No Oscar nomination this time, but Roberts did receive a Golden Globe nomination, her third, as did Rupert Everett as her gay best friend. Durmot Mulroney is Roberts’ straight best friend, the one who’s wedding to Cameron Diaz she sets out to disrupt, having decided that she wants him for herself. The plot may be unsavory, but it’s handled with style by director P.J. Hogan, whose Muriel’s Wedding had been a recent international success, and who re-emerged more recently with the equally unsavory, albeit stylish The Dressmaker with Kate Winslet and Judy Davis.

ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh

Roberts earned her fifth Golden Globe nomination and third win as well as her third Oscar nomination and first win for her no-nonsense portrayal of the real-life legal assistant who almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city’s water supply. Albert Finney received his fifth Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Roberts’ boss. Director Steven Soderbergh had pulled off the rare feat of being Oscar nominated for his direction of two films in the same year with this and the hard-hitting Traffic for which he won.

TICKET TO PARADISE (2022), directed by Ol Parker

Roberts reunited with her Oceans Eleven co-star George Clooney in this successful if not especially good rom com in which they play the divorced parents of a recent college graduate, an aspiring lawyer who opts out of her planned career choices to marry a Balinese seaweed farmer she meets while on a post-graduate vacation. Anyone who has ever seen a screen comedy can tell you, the parents’ objection to the marriage will evaporate, the young couple will proceed with their wedding, and the bickering divorced parents will reconcile and fall in love all over again.