9 months ago
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Julia Roberts covers the latest issue of British Vogue, and she’s interviewed by her friend, filmmaker Richard Curtis. Curtis wrote Notting Hill and that’s where he met Julia, when she came in to meet about the role in the 1990s. Notting Hill is a movie which grew on me over time – at first I hated it, but when I watched it a few years ago, there are parts of it which really hold up. It’s not as sweet as I remembered – there’s an edge to it, especially Julia’s character. Anyway, Julia is charming in this interview, and it’s a reminder that she really is one of the last movie stars, one of the last “greats” of that generation, the pre-social media gen. Some highlights from British Vogue:
How she stays so young-looking: “Pickling. I put my head in the jar every other Saturday for 18 hours. It does wonders. The smell is awful. No – serious answer. Good genes, leading a life that is fulfilling, and I have said this – and I say it usually as kind of a joke – but I do believe in the love of a good man. I believe that my husband loves me and cares for me in a way that makes me feel deeply, deeply happy. And anytime you see someone who’s happy, it doesn’t matter how old they are. Anouk Aimée said to me, many years ago when I was very young and it didn’t occur to me that I would ever have a wrinkle, “You live your face in your life until you’re 50, and then you live your life on your face.”
She’s not a trained actor: “I still envy people I work with who are very technical. I find it really fascinating, and I envy it so much. There’s so many different ways to approach it. And honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie [Notting Hill, 1999], playing a movie actress. I was so uncomfortable! I mean, we’ve talked about this so many times, but I almost didn’t take the part because it just seemed – oh, it just seemed so awkward. I didn’t even know how to play that person.
Her G-rated career: “My G-rated career…You know, not to be criticising others’ choices, but for me to not take off my clothes in a movie or be vulnerable in physical ways is a choice that I guess I make for myself. But in effect, I’m choosing not to do something as opposed to choosing to do something. Not long ago, I did my whole family tree with the brilliant Dr Henry Gates. If you’ve seen his show, Finding Your Roots, it’s brilliant and I’m obsessed with it. One of the things he does at the very, very end is he tells you who they have discovered you are DNA cousins with. I won’t even say, “Can you guess who I’m DNA cousins with?” because there’s no telling what horrible person you would choose just to embarrass me in this interview, but I am DNA cousins with Gloria Steinem.
The next generations of actors: “Oh, it’s completely different from my time. I mean, that’s when I really feel like a dinosaur, when you just look at the structure of the business. It’s completely different. I don’t know if it’s better, because it’s not my experience, but it just seems very different. And in a way, it seems so cluttered. There are so many elements to being famous now, it just seems exhausting. Whereas I feel like, and again this is just my perception, because I don’t really know – I’m not a young person starting out in show business in the 21st century – but it seems to me that it was: you meet people, you read for parts, you try to get jobs, you get a job, you try to do a good job, and from that job, you might meet some new people who might suggest you to some other people and then you might get another job and you might get paid a little bit more for that job, and it might be a little bit of a better job. It kind of just made this sort of structural sense, and now it just seems more chaotic. There’s more elements, there’s more noise, there’s more outlets, there’s more stuff.
Her family life: “Well, I think that the luckiest aspect of my work life/family life is that the success of my work life came earlier. So by the time I had the success of my family life and had a husband and children who wanted to stay home, I had been working for 18 years. And so I felt that I had the luxury. I didn’t have to pick one or the other…It was easy to pause work life to nurture my home life. And so, because I have girlfriends who were having to juggle being at work and having to go into the bathroom, and you know, get out that breast pump, I sort of went through that with them by proxy. To be allowed the luxury of staying home and being with my family, I had a deep gratitude for that time.
Curtis really pressed her about how she stays so youthful and Julia was lying her ass off! I mean, yes, she does have good genes and she was always a natural beauty (more than that, she’s always been otherworldly photogenic), but Julia has absolutely had some surgical upkeep. No shade, but it’s been obvious for years. I don’t really get why she went from “I never did nudity in films” to “Gloria Steinem is my cousin!” Feminism isn’t “don’t take your clothes off in movies.” That mentality is so dated, but hey, Julia sort of fits in with the Puriteens. Her most interesting comments are about how much the industry has changed and how she doesn’t really understand how things work for young actors these days. She’s not alone – the industry which nurtured her and helped her become one of the biggest movie stars in the world does not exist anymore.
Cover & IG courtesy of British Vogue.
