| Julia Roberts |
Julia Roberts
Julia Roberts is one of the most famous, most recognized, most talked about, and most reported upon celebrities in the world today, and has been for most of her almost 20-year career. After a few miscues early on, including making the 1988 film Blood Red with her now-estranged brother, Eric, Roberts hit the big time with Golden Globe-winning roles in Steel Magnolias and Pretty Woman in 1990 and 1991. Pretty Woman, of course, also earned her a first Oscar nomination, and was the movie that made her an international star.
Roberts’ filmography started growing quickly, and by 1998 she had appeared in Flatliners, Sleeping with the Enemy, Hook, Pelican Brief, I Love Trouble, Mary Reilly, Michael Collins, Everyone Says I Love You, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Conspiracy Theory with fellow A-lister Mel Gibson, Notting Hill and Runaway Bride. By this time, Roberts had been in about one billion dollar’s worth of movies, and her salary had risen to an unprecedented 15 million dollars for Notting Hill.
In 2000, Roberts outdid herself, and every other female star in Hollywood, by earning 20 million dollars and a best actress Oscar in Erin Brockovich. Her career success, however, was not matched by events in her personal life, and she continued in a series of short-lived affairs and relationships. She had been engaged to Kiefer Sutherland, her co-star in Flatliners, but ran off with Jason Patric to Europe just days before the wedding. She then eloped with country singer Lyle Lovett, got married barefoot, and was divorced from him by 1995. She dated Matthew Perry of TV’s Friends, lived briefly with actor Liam Neeson and dated Benjamin Bratt from 1998 to 2001. She was a pretty, but not a happy woman according to her friends and family.
All that changed in 2000 on the set of her movie with Brad Pitt, The Mexican, when she met cameraman Danny Moder. After Moder’s divorce, he and Roberts married in 2002, by which time the actress had added America’s Sweethearts, Ocean’s Eleven, Full Frontal and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to her résumé. In 2003, she received the highest salary ever paid to an actress, 25 million dollars, for Mona Lisa Smile, and made Closer and Ocean’s Twelve in quick succession before taking a sabbatical in 2004 and 2005 to raise her twins, Hazel and Phinaeus.
Roberts has homes in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, Malibu and Taos, New Mexico, and gives generously of her time and resources to UNICEF as well as other charitable groups. She has traveled to Haiti, India and many other countries to promote goodwill and help children and oppressed peoples. Roberts has been named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” a record-setting nine times, and has been a “People’s Choice” winner as favorite actress numerous times over a record-setting period of 14 years.
Now with a personal fortune estimated at one quarter of a billion dollars, Roberts does not have to make movies for money alone, and can attach herself to projects she truly believes in. She has The Ant Bully in post production, is set to play the title character in Charlotte’s Web and is in pre-production with Charlie Wilson’s War. 2006 and 2007 will see the release of at least three films with Roberts who, despite personal setbacks and even a brief career slump in the mid-1990s, has truly been adopted by moviegoers as “America’s Sweetheart.” Long may she reign. |
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