Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an Academy Award-winning American film actress and former fashion model. She shot to fame during the early 1990s after starring in the romantic comedy, Pretty Woman, opposite Richard Gere, which grossed US$463 million worldwide.

She won the Best Actress Academy Award in 2001 for her critically praised turn as the title character in Erin Brockovich and earned Oscar nominations as Best Supporting Actress for Steel Magnolias (1989) and Best Actress for Pretty Woman (1990). Her films, which also include The Pelican Brief, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, and Ocean’s Eleven, have collectively earned box office receipts well over US$2 billion.
Roberts has become the highest-paid actress in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter’s annual power list of top-earning female stars for four consecutive years (2002-2005). Her fee for 1990’s Pretty Woman was $300,000; in 2003, she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in Mona Lisa Smile. As of 2007, Roberts’ net worth was estimated to be US$140 million.

Roberts was the first actress to appear on the cover of Vogue and the first woman to land the cover of GQ. She has been named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” eleven times, tied with Halle Berry. In 2001 Ladies Home Journal ranked her as the 11th most powerful woman in America, beating out then national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and first lady Laura Bush. Roberts has a production company called Red Om Films (”Moder” spelled backwards; formerly Shoelace Productions).

A winsome beauty with a large, incandescent smile and a mane of hair, Julia Roberts was one of the few bankable female stars of the 1990s whose love affair with the public and world’s press continued into the next century. Critics have long speculated on the secret of her undeniable appeal, but it remained one of those enigmas of contemporary pop culture.

Roberts lacked the technical polish of some of her contemporaries, but was able to command the screen like no one else, even while surrounded by heavy hitters like Sally Field, Denzel Washington and Susan Sarandon. Her public life was also key to her longevity. From the trail of broken-hearted beaus she left in her wake to her self-imposed post-”Pretty Woman” exile to getting pregnant with twins – the public ate it all up with a spoon.

Born Oct. 28, 1967 in Smyrna, GA, Roberts originally planned to be a veterinarian, but later studied journalism instead. She was introduced to performing 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 brother Eric in “Blood Red,” although the 1986 film went unreleased for three years. Noticing that her old brother was scoring some success in Hollywood, Roberts decided to try acting as a career.

She first gained notice starring in two youth-oriented movies in 1988 – “Mystic Pizza” and “Satisfaction” (1988). In the former, Roberts played a memorably fiery Portuguese waitress. Only a year or two into her new career, the young actress earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination as the doomed diabetic heroine, Shelby, 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 – certainly its top female – and earned a surprise Best Actress Academy Award nomination. The iconic role would forever label her America’s “pretty woman” – even over a decade later. 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 in late 1991 with the weepie romance “Dying Young.” She finished the year with the supporting role of Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg’s lavish but disappointing 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. Rumors of bad blood between Roberts and Spielberg cast a pall on the project, sending the increasingly reclusive star into a self-imposed exile, which only fueled the press more.

It was at the peak of her early ’90s fame that Roberts took an unannounced break from acting to get her highly publicized personal life in order. Romances with co-stars Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott and most notably Kiefer Sutherland – whom she reportedly left for his best friend Robert Patrick only days before the wedding – all petered out, though her romance with the odd-looking actor/singer Lyle Lovett ended in a brief bare-footed marriage in 1993. Roberts made a cameo appearance as herself in Robert Altman’s “The Player” (1992) before making her much ballyhooed return to the screen after two years, reasserting her commercial magic opposite Denzel Washington in the political thriller, “The Pelican Brief” (1993), but lost a bit of ground 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 much 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 reassert her position as both America’s sweetheart and a box-office performer with her starring role in the hit 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 her 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 clichés 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, which nevertheless, did well at the box office. The much ballyhooed reteaming with Gere under Garry Marshall’s guidance in “Runaway Bride” (both 1999) brought out the crowds, but the film could in no way compete with the “Pretty Woman” legacy that came before. Together these films earned over $300 million domestically, justifying the actress’ standing as the highest paid female actor.

Just as critics thought she was all charm and no real acting chops, Roberts took on the role of her life, essaying the real-life legal secretary who assisted in turning a water poisoning case into one of the largest class-action lawsuits in U.S. history, in “Erin Brockovich” (2000). Her stellar work under the direction of Stephen Soderbergh, earned her just about every accolade in 2001, including the Best Actress Oscar.

After such a heavy project, Roberts returned to comedy, playing the frustrated girlfriend of a low-level, somewhat bumbling gangster (Brad Pitt) in the “The Mexican” (2001). Although she and Pitt were not on screen together for very long, the pair shared a nice easy chemistry – but the actress had better rapport with James Gandolfini, as the hitman who kidnaps her as insurance. Despite fielding many offers and after already playing a movie star on screen, Roberts opted this time to play the personal assistant to the movie star (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the disastrous, critically reviled comedy, “America’s Sweethearts” (2001). To recover from that disaster, Roberts re-teamed with Soderbergh for a small role in his remake of “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001). Playing Tess Ocean, George Clooney’s perpetually disappointed wife, Roberts did her best to keep up with the hunky boys, including Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia.

Robert’s next project was also with Soderbergh, in the non-narrative sequel to his 1989 film “Sex, Lies and Videotape” – “Full Frontal” (2002). Roberts’ character, wearing an extremely unattractive hairdo, was shockingly uninteresting and unimportant to the story, such as it was. Worse was her limp turn in new 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 played a spy femme fatale in a performance so purposefully arch as to defy belief.

Roberts fared better in her next project, the harmless “Mona Lisa Smile” (2003), playing Katherine Watson, a liberal-minded educator who takes a feminist position at Wellesley in the 1950s and quickly comes under fire for teaching her female students to aspire to something other than marriage and kids. 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 audiences once again rooting for her.

Just as Roberts began filming the anticipated sequel “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004), the actress, who was by then onto her second marriage to cameraman Danny Moder, announced to the world that she was pregnant with twins. Perhaps due to the impending birth, Roberts appeared to be having more fun than in the first “Oceans,” gamely playing off of her pregnancy and – in a harder-to-swallow plot spin – her character’s uncanny resemblance to movie star Julia Roberts. Just prior to the release of that film, Roberts made international headlines when she gave birth to a boy and a girl, Phinnaeus and Hazel, in November, 2004. Hot on the heels of that arrival was the debut of the Mike Nichols-directed drama “Closer” (2004), in which she played an American photographer in London caught up in the heated, sometimes erotic, often cruel love/sex gender war amid two shifting sets of couples (Jude Law and Natalie Portman; Roberts and Clive Owen). The highly literate film received excellent reviews and brought Roberts’ her best notice since “Erin Brockovich.”

After taking time off to enjoy her twins and family time on her Taos, NM ranch, Roberts returned to work – this time, surprising many by accepting a role on Broadway. In April of 2006, Roberts headlined the Richard Greenberg drama, “Three Days of Rain,” co-starring Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper. Although her reviews were lukewarm, the play sold out its 12-week run, proving Roberts’ appeal extended beyond the big screen and various magazine covers.
Roberts’s personal life has often been in the spotlight, a fact reflected in her Notting Hill, a romantic comedy about a famous actress falling for a bookstore owner played by Hugh Grant, another star with a high-profile personal life.

Roberts has had widely reported romantic relationships with numerous famous men, including Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott, Kiefer Sutherland, Lyle Lovett, Daniel Day-Lewis, Matthew Perry, and Benjamin Bratt. She was briefly engaged to McDermott, her Steel Magnolias co-star. She met Sutherland in 1990, when he was her co-star in Flatliners; he left his wife and children to move in with Roberts. In August 1990, Roberts and Sutherland announced their engagement, with an elaborate studio-planned wedding scheduled for June 14, 1991.

Roberts broke the engagement three days before the wedding when she discovered Sutherland had been meeting with a stripper named Amanda Rice. Roberts subsequently went to Ireland with Jason Patric, a friend of Sutherland’s. On June 27, 1993, she married country singer Lyle Lovett; the couple had met only three weeks earlier. The wedding took place on 72-hours’ notice and was held in Marion, Indiana, near where Lovett was appearing on tour with his band. Less than two years later, in March 1995, the couple announced their separation. They subsequently divorced.

In 1998, Roberts began dating Law & Order star Benjamin Bratt, who was her escort for the March 25, 2001 Academy Awards ceremony at which she won her Oscar. Three months later, in June 2001, Roberts and Bratt announced that they were no longer a couple. “It’s come to a kind and tenderhearted end,” she said of their relationship.

Roberts met her current husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, on the set of her movie The Mexican in 2000 and they began an affair. Though at the time, Moder was married to Vera Steinberg Moder, he filed for divorvce a little over a year later, and after it was finalized, he and Roberts wed on Fourth of July 2002, at her ranch in Taos, New Mexico.

On November 28, 2004, they became the parents of fraternal twins, daughter Hazel Patricia and son Phinnaeus Walter. Their third child, son Henry Daniel Moder, was born on June 18, 2007 in Los Angeles.

Roberts has long owned a penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood. She reportedly loves to shop anonymously, buying her own organic greens on weekends at the market in nearby Union Square. She and her family divide their time between their homes in Taos New Mexico, New York City, Malibu, and Venice Beach, California.

It is believed that Julia no longer owns the Venice Beach property. Shortly after marrying Moder, she purchased two beachfront lots in Malibu for $20,000,000 and began planning an exclusive compound that would be the family’s permanent home. She razed the original structure on the property and made plans for the construction of a new 6,144 sq. ft. mansion. The home is expected to be complete in time for Christmas 2007 and has 5 bedrooms and six bathrooms. The property also will have a tennis court and olympic swimming pool. When complete the market value could be as high as $40 million.

Roberts has never done a nude scene in her entire film career. This was especially noted in the movie “Flatliners”, where her top is open with the cardio sensors on her chest, but her breasts are covered with a bra.

Roberts has given her time and resources to UNICEF as well as to other charitable organizations. In Spring 1995, Roberts, an enthusiastic supporter of UNICEF, asked if she could meet some of the relief agency’s neediest recipients. On May 10, she arrived in Port-au-Prince, as she said, “to educate myself.” The poverty she found was overwhelming. “My heart is just bursting,” she said. UNICEF officials hoped that her six-day visit would trigger an outburst of giving: $10 million in aid was sought at the time.

In 2000, Roberts narrated Silent Angels, a documentary about Rett syndrome, which was shot in Los Angeles, Baltimore and New York. The documentary was designed to help raise public awareness about the disease. In July 2006, Earth Biofuels announced Roberts as a spokeswoman for the company and as chair of the company’s newly formed Advisory Board promoting the use of renewable fuels.

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