“We all have our good and bad days, but I think kindness and gentleness towards ourselves is the most important thing.”
-JULIA ROBERTS
Julia Roberts celebrates her 50th birthday on October 28th but the Hollywood star insists she doesn’t have any hang-ups about reaching the milestone. The 50 year old super star is also being featured on People Magazine’s cover as the ‘World’s Most Beautiful Woman’ for the fifth time now. The Pretty Woman’s cult icon, Erin Brikovich’s fast talking southern go getter and one of the most beautiful women in the world, comes home to a life lived to the fullest and has a lot more to offer, especially now that she is basking in the golden glow of being on her side of half a centennial. Julia lives in Malibu with her cinematographer husband Daniel Moder, whom she met on the set of The Mexican in 2000 and their three children, twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 12 and Henry Daniel, 10. With Roberts, the best is always yet to come.
ON TURNING 50
JULIA ROBERTS: I’m really excited about my 50th birthday. because it’s a time when –
“I feel so happy with my life and where I’m at. I think it’s more about that than the number, which sounds so clichéd, but the closer you get to 50 the more the clichés come true I think.”
ON BEING NAMED THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN FOR A RECORD FIFTH TIME
JR: It’s flattering but I don’t know what it is except for a conversation. I remember the cover of People magazine first time I was the ‘World’s Most Beautiful’, I looked like a little kitten or a puppy or something that looks adorable but really not the world’s most beautiful woman [laughs]. I still look the same when I wake up in the morning and then 38 odd people come in with their stucco and masonry and have me look like this!
ON GETTING OLDER
JR:
“You start to realise there is no value in not being happy.”
ON BEAUTY
JR: I use a lot of Lancôme and that seems to be working.
ON DIETS
JR: It is unfortunate that all the things that can be enjoyed like food and ageing, have turned into a culture that makes girls panic.
ON BEING IN SHAPE
JR: We all have our good and bad days, but I think kindness and gentleness towards ourselves is the most important thing.
ON FAMILY VALUES
JR: Family values are values in general, that’s all that there is. To have a bedrock of knowing who you are especially since fame is a summer breeze that comes and goes.
ON THE SECRET TO A LONG-LASTING RELATIONSHIP IN HOLLYWOOD
JR: I don’t think it’s exclusive to Hollywood. I wouldn’t even think of us as a celebrity couple, but I don’t know, kissing! [laughs]
ON WORKING WITH HER HUSBAND
JR: He’s my favourite person on the planet, so I love spending time with. However, I love his work ethic and his point of view is really valuable to me.
ON MOTHERHOOD
JR: I love it all! I love it when it’s easy and I love it when it’s challenging. I am suddenly allowed to not only enjoy the weekends but also Christmas and summer vacation in an entirely new way. Motherhood is such a great learning experience offering a very unique point of view because suddenly your children are your teachers.
ON ADVICE TO HER FRIEND AND NEW DAD-OF-TWINS GEORGE CLOONEY
JR: They are a great couple and I think they don’t need advice from me or anyone else because, also, nobody’s there with you at three’o’clock in the morning when you’re just going, ‘What am I doing? Where did they come from and when are they going?’ And then you sort of get through it and figure it out. And everybody does, and it’s a trial and error and a whole lot of tears and it’s amazing. I have three incredible kids and to think about when they were teeny tiny. It goes so fast.
ON TRAVELLING
JR: I used to travel quite a lot before I had a family. Now as a family we travel a lot, but that’s sort of a different endeavour. I do love to travel. I think it’s one of the great luxuries of our life and of modern times – to be able to go so quickly to places so far away and it’s hugely informative to see other cultures, to discover other regions, other ways of living, other concepts of spirituality, it’s fascinating.
ON NOT GOING TO COLLEGE
JR: I had very smart parents. So I feel that I learned a lot from them and then of course, life experiences teach a lot..
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
JR: I don’t have my head in the sand. I’m aware of the different outlets, however you label them. It’s like people talking about a TV show: I can be perfectly aware of the TV show and the story, but it doesn’t mean I will watch it. I have other friends who watch it, and they tell me about it. Everyone has Instagram on their phone. And I just, yeah, [if I had it] I would be looking at it all the time.
ON APPEARING ON STAGE WITH TAYLOR SWIFT
JR: I will say this, when she very sweetly asked if I would go on stage, my oldest son said: ‘Mommy you have to do it’ and my youngest son said: ‘Mommy only do it if you feel comfortable.’
ON WINNING AN OSCAR
JR: It was so great. And I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding at all. I highly recommend it. [laughter]
ON AWARDS IN GENERAL
JR: It’s under my bed, in a box. I have this little space in my house that my husband refers to as the heritage collection. Things I go, ‘I can’t get rid of this, what about Hazel [her daughter]?’ Maybe she’ll want it.
ON AWARDS IN GENERAL
JR: For me, it’s such a triumph when we wrap, that I’ve made friends and that I’ve accomplished my own personal standards of goals for me and all this kind of stuff is just the extra happy stuff.
ON HOW SHE FEELS ABOUT PRETTY WOMAN THESE DAYS
JR: It is not a bad movie to have follow you around for 25-odd years. I think it takes years to realise that level of how it has been absorbed into popular culture. It takes this many years because those are the words that I hear the most from people. It is nice, at least it is a nice title, you know it could be worse. [laughs]
ON HER MEMORIES OF SIGNING UP TO NOTTING HILL
JR: The script was great. When I sat to read it I did not have any great expectations. I had been given a brief synopsis and it sounded unappealing. But when I read it, from the very start with her going into the bookshop and she seems very mysterious and there is this guy having all these troubles and they leave and collide and she is at his house and she kisses him, I thought ‘Jesus Christ, this is great’, I was completely sucked in.
ON MAKING AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
JR: I’ve never worked so hard in my life – and I have given birth to three children. It was like a mountain to climb every single day and the only way to climb it, we discovered, was holding hands – whether we liked it or not.
ON WHAT SHE LOOKS FOR IN A ROLE
JR: I think it’s just, you know, an instinct. I read a script, and if I’m connected to it and I think I want to accomplish this, I will do it. I try and work on varied things just for my own creative impulses. I want things to be different and challenging.
ON WHETHER SHE WANTS TO DIRECT IN THE FUTURE
JR: No. [laughs] Listen, I get everybody out the door to school, on time, clean, fed, happy. Like, that’s directing a whole production right there. [laughs]
ON WHAT ADVICE SHE WOULD GIVE TO HER YOUNGER SELF
JR: Don’t take advice from anybody, even if they look exactly like you. [laughs]
