Julia Roberts
Issue date:
June 20-22, 1997
Luck, love and a life without limits
Julia Roberts is back this weekend in My Best Friend's Wedding -- just the kind of madcap romance her fans like best. But with her 30th birthday in sight, she says, "I have to be allowed room to do all different things."
By Lorrie Lynch
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Roberts' movie highlights

Conspiracy Theory, with co-star/prankster Mel Gibson. Due July 25.

Best Friend's Wedding with Dermot Mulroney.
 1990's Pretty Woman: Roberts had eyes for Richard Gere.
 1989's Steel Magnolias: Roberts earns an early Oscar nod.
Photo Credits: Conspiracy Theory: ANDREW COOPER, WARNER BROS.; My Best Friend's Wedding: SUZANNA TUCKER
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Maturity is doing well by Julia Roberts, who was just 17 when she left Smyrna, Ga., to try acting in New York. Pretty since childhood thanks to high cheekbones, deep-set brown eyes and that mile-wide smile, Roberts -- whose new movie, My Best Friend's Wedding, opens this weekend -- has grown into more sophisticated beauty. Long, lithe and clearly comfortable in her own skin, she'll turn 30 in October and is unintimidated by the milestone. "At this point, I may as well be 30," Roberts says with a laugh. "The 20s are over."She was all of 22 when the public met her in a big way in the spring of 1990. That was when she was Oscar-nominated for the previous year's Steel Magnolias and touted as the next big thing for Pretty Woman. Her personal and professional roads have taken many turns since, some quite unhappy, but at this junction she's sanguine. "I just like what I do and I try to find the groovy nuances in it." She hasn't knocked one out of the park since 1993's The Pelican Brief, but with My Best Friend's Wedding she returns to what made her famous in the first place: romantic comedy. She understands why fans like her in those roles. "The way you're introduced to something is the way you're more comfortable with it," she says. That said, she feels entitled to growth. "I have to be allowed room to do all different things, whether it's small movies or big movies or somber parts or giddy parts. [If not,] I should just do one television show for the next 80 years."
MOVIE-STAR LIFE, however, means you can't even get married without plans for dodging paparazzi-filled helicopters. Roberts outsmarted them all four years ago when she wed singer Lyle Lovett. Her choice of husband turned out to be as open to criticism as the work she puts onscreen.
In part, that may have been because their wedding, at a small Indiana church, flabbergasted followers of both, who barely had time to process the fact they were romancing. But there's no getting around it; their pairing -- the 25-year-old glamour girl and the 35-year-old wild-haired Texan -- seemed odd. Divorced after 21 months, they're still friends, a change in status few ex-spouses attain easily. He wouldn't talk about her for this story. But she's open, to a point. Does it ever feel weird? "No," she says, holding up a written phone message to return his call. "I can't imagine Lyle not being in my life. I can't imagine us not being friends. I can't imagine our relationship being more than what it is." But it was more. What happened? "It belittles the respect a situation deserves to try to pretend it can be reduced to words." Does it hurt if he goes out with somebody else? "No. Gosh, I'm always trying to get him to go out with somebody else. I want him to be happy." What if he got married again? "If Lyle met some wonderful girl and got married and had six kids, I'd be the first one at the party." Before her marriage, Roberts was as famous for romancing her co-stars as for the movies themselves. She was engaged to both her Steel Magnolias husband, Dylan McDermott, and Flatliners co-star Kiefer Sutherland, whom she left a day before she was to walk down the aisle. She may also count among her beaus actors Liam Neeson, Jason Patric and Matthew Perry. Her latest romance, with Pasquale Manocchia, who owns a Manhattan center for preventive medicine, is over. They, too, have remained friends. "I think I'm over picking the bad ones," she muses.
YOUNG PEOPLE DEVELOPING CAREERS usually get a chance to try new things, even fail sometimes. Yet Roberts has taken lots of knocks for the choices she's made. There were the two years, for example, after Pretty Woman, at the height of Hollywood's fondness for her, that she quit working. She describes herself as "semi-fragile" and the hiatus as "uncalculated," but had she not taken the time, "I might have cracked."
The people who sustained her were the circle she has kept close since she arrived in New York. A few are Hollywood names -- Susan Sarandon and her partner, Tim Robbins, for example -- but most are not actors. In photos scattered about her office, Roberts is surrounded by family and non-famous faces. Friends and colleagues say the offscreen Julia, no matter what she might have been made out to be during often prickly relations with the press, always has been professional, smart, thoughtful and lots of fun. "She's a very good friend to her friends," says her friend and agent Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. Cameron Diaz, also in My Best Friend's Wedding, calls Roberts a "great conversationalist. She's very witty. There's never a moment when she has nothing to say." If anyone tested her sense of humor it was Mel Gibson, who admits to merciless prankstering on the set of their July thriller, Conspiracy Theory. On the first day of shooting, he handed Roberts a gift-wrapped, freeze-dried rat. "I said it was a token of my appreciation. 'Here's to a good time working together.' " The shrieking began after he left. He also spread "gobs of mucus-like stuff" on his hand for a scene in which he and Roberts shake, and hid burly producer Joel Silver behind a shower curtain for a scene where she pulls it back. She took it all in stride.
IF BOTH WEDDING AND CONSPIRACY THEORY live up to their early buzz, Roberts will have a blockbuster summer. Her last few movies, Mary Reilly, Michael Collins and Everyone Says I Love You, didn't showcase her, but she remains one of a handful of women who can "open" a movie. She gets as much as, or more than, any other woman onscreen, $12 million to $15 million a film. "Is it outrageous? Sure. Absolutely. I get paid an absurd salary," she says. "But, at the same time, last year I made two movies for not my salary, and I was more than happy to do so. The fact is, it is a business and one must stay competitive." She will work for less. "I would like to be known as someone who just wants to do things that are interesting and appealing and quality. If the people making that don't have money, I would want them to know that's not a given. But if it's the studio asking me to do something I think is good and they've got a bazillion dollars, well, they have to pay me. Because that's the way the market works. It has nothing to do with me as a person. And also, after taxes, we're all just gettin' taken to the cleaners."
PRETTY WOMEN DON'T ALWAYS AGE WELL in Hollywood. Those with talent may. So may those with intelligence. And it helps to take a don't-mess-with-me attitude. Roberts has all of the above, plus a roster of role models. "It's a matter of going forward and not allowing anybody to limit you," she says. Stars like Goldie Hawn, Sally Field and "my great friend and role model, Susan Sarandon" are "supreme examples" of women doing just that. "Susan knocks the heck out of every stereotype," says Roberts. "She's proof that anything is possible and everything is possible in combination. "I saw Goldie recently, and she just took my breath away. She's beautiful and she's hilarious and so sweet and friendly, and I thought, 'Yeah. These women are advertisements for getting older, because they just seem so joyful, and like they get it and like they know it.' It's really encouraging." Like Hawn, Field and Sarandon, Roberts has become savvy about her industry. She has her own production company and keeps an airy loft office, very urban-chic, complete with custom-made bookshelves (she's a voracious reader) and staffed with assistants. Even in jeans and a simple white blouse, sipping an espresso drink, it's possible to see her for what she is here: a businesswoman. "The two aspects to this business are 'show' and 'business,' and I'm the show," says Roberts, slouched behind a desk. "At some point it does become necessary to participate in the business aspect. But I much prefer the show." Roberts can't yet imagine life beyond 30. But asked what she'd tell another 22-year-old actress on the brink of superstardom, she reflects a moment. "I'd tell her, 'Cover your tracks. Accentuate the positive. Appreciate things. Just know that every single moment of anything remotely good is a gift.' "
"Who's News" columnist Lorrie Lynch last wrote about the family of Ron Goldman.
Photo Credit: GREG HEISLER FOR USA WEEKEND
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