It’s been 38 years since she arrived in Hollywood as a wide-eyed ingenue and Julia Roberts is the first to admit much has changed for women in that time. But despite the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements that rocked the entertainment industry to the core, the Pretty Woman star laughs at the suggestion that all the battles have been won.
“It’s still super-male,” Julia laments.
“Make no mistake. I often find myself sitting at a table and, maybe, there’s only one other woman there.”
The difference between 20-year-old Julia – whose first role was as a character called Babs in a movie that went straight to video – and 58-year-old Julia is that these days, she doesn’t bat an eyelid.
“In those environments, I am without fear,” says the Oscar winner.
In After the Hunt with Andrew Garfield.
Empty nest, new opportunities
This year has been a significant one for Julia. After two decades of prioritising the raising of her kids, twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 20, and younger son Henry, 18, she and her cameraman husband Danny Moder, 57, are officially empty nesters.
For Julia, that means she suddenly feels able to spread her acting wings as far and wide as she likes. So when a role in the psychological thriller After the Hunt came along, she happily gave in to the temptation to say yes.
Playing Alma
In the film, Julia plays Alma, a philosophy professor caught in a bind when a male colleague and friend is accused of sexual assault by a star pupil. The Notting Hill actor has played educators before, of course – from an inspiring 1950s art history teacher in Mona Lisa Smile to a disillusioned community college English teacher with a taste for alcohol in Larry Crowne.
This role, however, was new territory for Julia. In After the Hunt, her character butts heads with one student and not only publicly chastens another but seems to revel in it. It was a scene Julia dreaded filming, fearing the young actor who played her victim, Thaddea Graham, 28, “would never say ‘good morning’ to me again”.
Her fears were unfounded and she drew the brutality required for the scene from her own past.
Julia’s given parenting advice to George and Amal.
Confronting challenging scenes
“A person in a position of power over me sort of publicly humiliated me,” she recalls.
“It’s so horrible. That was a very hard scene to accomplish on a lot of levels, but not the least of which is, thank goodness, it is not my nature at all to feel comfortable belittling people in front of others.”
Following in the footsteps of other acting heavyweights, including Meryl Streep, Kathy Bates and Nicole Kidman, insiders say Julia is on the precipice of an exciting mid-life career revival where anything and everything is possible.
Embracing empty nest freedom
Julia herself has described her kids leaving home as making her “a little lightheaded,” but says, “Fortunately, we’ve had lots of visits along the way of this empty nest.”
And on the flip side, she’s looking forward to all the possibilities her newfound freedom offers.
“When I became a parent, I learned that I could not take a job unless I was fully committed to it,” she explains.
“If I still felt like I had one foot in the house, I could not do it.”
She noticed a shift in her mindset when the script for her latest movie landed on her desk.
The star and Danny recently celebrated 23 years together.
Wrestling with Alma’s complexity
“The thing that intrigued me here was that I just couldn’t decide if I liked Alma or hated her,” Julia admits.
“Or even understood her. And that is a reason to leave the comfort of my own home for work, right? To go someplace uncomfortable.”
With her offspring now off doing their own thing, Julia has also found herself reflecting on her child-raising years with Danny, who she met on the set of the movie The Mexican in 2000. The Erin Brockovich star recently gave a rare insight into their parenting style in a conversation with her old pal George Clooney, 64, who is raising eight-year-old twins Ella and Alexander with his human rights lawyer wife Amal, 47.
It turns out she is no pushover in the mum department.
Strict but loving rules
“They were,” Julia says of her children, “some of the last kids in their peer groups to get phones and stuff like that.
“When they were younger, certainly, Danny and I would have been considered some of the stricter parents. “Not like, ‘We’re laying down the law’, but, ‘These are the rules and they don’t change. You don’t ask me and get an answer, then go ask Dad and get a different answer. That doesn’t happen. It will never happen.’ “I think that’s what creates the stability and allows them to feel secure because you know there is this fixed world of love and safety that exists unconditionally.”
Teen years aren’t as tough as they seem
She also reassured George that the teen years, which he has yet to experience, are not necessarily a rollercoaster.
“None of it is really as hard as we make it out to be,” she told him.
“They don’t wake up as monsters one day. They don’t turn 13 and hate you. They don’t turn 16 and hate you. “You just have to hang in there, and things shift, then the boat rights itself again.”
Bridging the generation gap
As for the generation gap? It’s not a big deal either, says Julia.
“Every generation thinks that – remember Elvis?” she laughs.
“It’s unfortunate when people go, ‘Well, in my day…’ All that bull***t. I love being with young people.”
Pride in family life
Despite being one of Hollywood’s biggest names, with an estimated fortune of $430 million, the Eat, Pray, Love star says her proudest thing is the life she’s built with her children and husband.
Pundits predicted she and Danny would never last when their relationship began while he was still married to his first wife, make-up artist Vera Steimberg, 52, and Julia was ostensibly dating Miss Congeniality star Benjamin Bratt, 61.
Julia has since denied breaking up Danny’s marriage, confiding, “I’m an easy person to point the finger at. I don’t begrudge people the easy finger point. It just doesn’t happen to be so. He sorted his whole thing out, separate and apart from me. And I sorted my life out, separate and apart from him. I think that’s the only reason we were able to ultimately fall in love with each other and be together.”
A simple celebration
She and Danny tied the knot at Julia’s New Mexico ranch on July 4, 2002 with little fanfare, and this year they continued their “no frills” theme by marking their 23rd wedding anniversary with a simple camping trip.
Julia posted a photograph showing the couple’s nuzzling feet inside a tent with the words, “You + Me = 23.” Danny, she says, “makes me feel deeply, deeply happy”.
1987
A year before she becomes famous, Julia connects with co-star Liam Neeson, 16 years her senior, on the movie Satisfaction and enjoys a brief romance.
1989
The actor nabs a Golden Globe for Steel Magnolias.
1990
Julia and her Flatliners co-star Kiefer Sutherland are due to seal their whirlwind romance with a wedding. Instead, Julia ends things and soon starts a romance with Kiefer’s friend Jason Patric.
1990
Julia’s career goes stratospheric after her iconic role in Pretty Woman, for which she is nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA.
1993
Three weeks after starting a romance with country music star Lyle Lovett, Julia says “I do” in a small Indianna town. They amicably separate two years later.
2000
And the winner is! Julia scoops an Oscar for her role in Erin Brockovich in addition to a Golden Globe, a SAG, a BAFTA and a Critic’s Choice Award.
2000
Julia meets the love of her life, Danny Moder, the cinematographer on her hit movie The Mexican.
2002
Danny and Julia exchange vows in a low-key wedding with no guest celebrities at her New Mexico ranch.
2004
2004 Twins Phinnaeus Walter and Hazel Patricia are born on November 24 to their delighted parents.
2007
Baby Henry Daniel arrives on June 18, 2007, completing the family of five.
2010
Fans adore Julia in Eat, Pray, Love.
2013
The star receives an Oscar nomination for her part in August Osage County.
2022
Julia gets the thumbs up for her role as larger-than-life Martha Mitchell in the Watergate TV drama Gaslit.
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