October 24, 2007. Copyright 2007, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Pretty Woman Roberts reaches 40
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, October 24, Graphic News:  With her trademark wide smile, record-setting salary deals and an Oscar win for a heavyweight, solo lead role, Julia Roberts is arguably the most successful actress of her generation. The first woman ever to be paid $20 million for a single movie, she first came to prominence in the 1989 weepie, Steel Magnolias. Playing a newly-wed Southern belle whose life is cut short by diabetes, Georgia-born Julia -- still only 20 -- held her own among a stellar cast which included Shirley MacLaine, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah and RobertsŐ own mentor, Sally Field. Her performance as the young bride, Shelby, opposite Dylan McDermott, with whom she was also involved off-screen, earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. Younger audiences had seen her the year before in the quirky independent, Mystic Pizza. But it was the movie that followed, in 1990, that made her known around the world.

Pretty Woman put RobertsŐ face and figure on billboards everywhere; in fact, the poster showing her back-to-back with co-star Richard Gere, was itself the subject of hot debate about whose body double was used for the promotional shot. That aside, the story was a winner along familiar lines, taking a street girl and turning her into a stunning partner for GereŐs wealthy businessman. Among the filmŐs biggest fans was Audrey Hepburn, who had played a not-dissimilar role in My Fair Lady. Roberts would later follow in HepburnŐs footsteps as a supporter of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF.

Born into a family of actors, on October 28, 1967, Julie Fiona, as she started out, was nonetheless unprepared for the problems fame on such a scale brought her in her twenties. After Pretty Woman, she filmed Flatliners, a dark drama about medical students trying to fathom the afterlife. Working on Flatliners highlighted what was to become a perpetual dilemma for Roberts: that the public and the media seemed as interested in the dramas of her personal life as those on the big screen. When she became engaged to co-star Kiefer Sutherland, and then spectacularly pulled out of the wedding with just days to go, the story was bigger, by far, than the mediocre movie.

A hasty marriage to Country and Western singer Lyle Lovett in 1993 lasted only two years, but mirrored a period of recovery in her career which had nosedived when she was curiously cast as Tinkerbell in Steven SpielbergŐs unsuccessful project, Hook (1991). The film version of the John Grisham legal thriller, The Pelican Brief (1993) put her back on track, opposite Denzel Washington. The rest of the decade saw both highs and lows in her work, but seemed to prove that light-hearted romantic comedy was her genre, with the box office hits My Best FriendŐs Wedding (1997) and Notting Hill (1999), in which she played a glamorous star seemingly doomed in her efforts to lead a normal life, until bookseller Hugh Grant helped her off the Hollywood merry-go-round. A reunion with Gere for Runaway Bride (1999) ended the nineties largely where they had begun.

And then came the watershed. In the title role of Erin Brockovich (2000), a single mother working as a legal secretary who takes on an energy giant which is poisoning the local water supply, the mould was broken once and for all. Not only did Roberts prove herself a worthy Oscar winner, this time without a male co-star from the super league, but the public roared its approval; the film took more than $28 million at U.S. box offices in its opening weekend alone and has since grossed more than $250 million worldwide. RobertsŐ own fee of $20 million was the first such figure ever paid to a female film star. 

Working on The Mexican (2001) with Brad Pitt, Roberts met cameraman Danny Moder and married him on American Independence Day in 2002. The couple have since had twins, Phinnaeus and Hazel, and another baby boy, Henry, born in June of this year.
/ENDS

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bibliography: www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment; www.westlord.com; en.wikipedia.org; www.xyno.de/prettywoman; www.imdb.com; www.thinkexist.com