The versatile American actress Julia Roberts became one of the most famous and well-paid performers of the ‘1900s and ‘2000s because of her superb performances in a wide range of roles.
Full Name: Julia Fiona Roberts
At the age of 56, she was born on October 28, 1967, in Smyrna, Georgia, USA.
Accolades: 2001 Academy Award winner In 2001, she won an Oscar for best actress in a leading role. Silver Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Film (2001) The Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Film (1991) Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture (1990) Golden Globe Award winner Renowned Members of the Family: Lyle Lovett, Spouse.
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After high school, Roberts moved to New York City to work in the entertainment industry, even though her parents had briefly run an actors’ workshop. She and her parents have no acting training. After arriving, she signed with a modeling agency but got no jobs. Her first film part was in Blood Red (1989), completed in 1986 but not released for several years. Her older brother, actor Eric Roberts, recommended her, and she played his sister. After that, she appeared in several TV guest spots before her breakout role in 1988’s Mystic Pizza.
After appearing in Steel Magnolias (1989) with Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, and Sally Field, Roberts’ career took off. Roberts’ heartbreaking depiction of Field’s diabetic daughter earned her an Oscar award for best supporting actress. In 1990, she starred in Pretty Woman, a lighthearted comedy about a prostitute and a business tycoon dating. This blockbuster made Roberts famous and won her a second Oscar nomination.
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Over the course of the 1990s, Roberts maintained a consistent work schedule, appearing in films such as Flatliners (1990), Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), The Pelican Brief (1993), Something to Talk About (1995), Mary Reilly (1996), My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), and Stepmom (1998), where she concurrently held the position of executive producer. However, there were moments when her private life took center stage, like when her marriage to artist Lyle Lovett ended suddenly in 1995, which received a lot of media attention. Roberts had a successful 1999 acting career, appearing in the romantic comedies Runaway Bride (again starring Gere) and Notting Hill. The film Erin Brockovich (2000), starring Julia Roberts, was directed by Steven Soderbergh.
MediaThe film Erin Brockovich (2000) starred Julia Roberts.
Along with launching Shoelace Productions in 2000, Roberts earned $20 million for her leading part in Erin Brockovich that year. Based on a true incident, the film follows a law office clerk who assists a California town’s residents in settling a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a utility firm for water contamination-related health issues.
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The Oscar winner for best actress, Roberts, was praised for her performance. In the hit comedies Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and Ocean’s Twelve (2004), she co-starred with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon. In 2004, she made an appearance in the romantic drama Closer.
StaticCharlie Wilson’s War (2007), starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
Roberts provided the voice of the spider Charlotte in the 2006 animated film adaptation of Charlotte’s Web, a much-loved children’s novel by E.B. White. That same year, she debuted on Broadway in the critically acclaimed but critically panned Three Days of Rain, which co-starred Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper. The next year, Roberts co-starred alongside Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), an accurate portrayal of the 1980s American government’s role in the Afghan resistance movement against the Soviet Union.
Fireflies in the Garden (2008), a family drama; Duplicity (2009), a romantic comedy about a corporate spy; and Valentine’s Day (2010) were her subsequent film appearances. Roberts reunited with Hanks in Larry Crowne (2011) after appearing in Eat Pray Love (2010), based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling novel of the same name. In the film, Roberts played a lecturer at a community college. She portrayed the wicked queen in the 2012 comedy Mirror Mirror, a spin on the classic Snow White story.
Roberts received an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of her mother, who was brutally critical, in the 2013 family drama August: Osage County, adapted from Tracy Letts’s play. Meryl Streep also had a role in the film. She went on to play a doctor who helped gay men in New York City during the early years of the AIDS crisis in the 2014 television adaption of Larry Kramer’s play.
The Normal Heart. Roberts played the role of an FBI agent whose daughter is killed and raped in the 2015 film Secret in Their Eyes. After that, in 2016, she appeared in Mother’s Day, an ensemble comedy, in the role of a determined entrepreneur. Roberts, alongside Clooney and the rest of the team, is held prisoner in Jodie Foster’s 2016 Wall Street thriller Money Monster, in which she plays the role of a financial advice show producer.
Roberts voiced a character in Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017) and portrayed a mother in Wonder who cares for her child who has an unusual face ailment. Her first television series, Homecoming, aired the following year, and she portrayed a psychiatrist who helped veterans readjust to civilian life. In Ben Is Back, she played a mother whose son decided to bypass rehabilitation and come home for Christmas instead.
Following this, Roberts made an appearance in the 2022 TV miniseries Gaslit, a drama that focused on the efforts to delegitimize Martha Mitchell, the outspoken wife of U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, as she endeavored to expose the truth behind the Watergate crisis. Ticket to Paradise, a romantic comedy set amid a broken family’s attempts to halt their daughter’s wedding, also starred Clooney and Roberts in 2022.
Roberts was a generous supporter of many nonprofits during her career, including the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and UNICEF. She joined up with Julia Roberts to narrate the 1998 documentary In the Wild: Orangutans, and she spent weeks living with Mongolian nomads for the 2000 documentary Wild Horses of Mongolia, both of which aired on American television to bring attention to endangered species.
