Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts: The Smile That Moved Markets

Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill when Julia Fiona Roberts arrived at Atlanta's Crawford Long Hospital on 28 October 1967. It was a thank-you: her parents, Walter and Betty Roberts, ran what was then the only racially integrated theatre troupe in the region, and Walter had served as acting coach to Yolanda King. Thirty-three years later their daughter became the first actress paid $20 million for a single film, and won an Academy Award for it. Between those two facts sits the most commercially consequential career any American actress has had.

Smyrna

Her parents were former actors and playwrights who met performing for the U.S. Armed Forces, and who ran the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in Midtown alongside a children's acting school in Decatur. They divorced when she was four; Walter died of cancer when she was ten. She grew up in Smyrna, Georgia, played clarinet in the school band at Campbell High, and wanted to be a veterinarian. Her brother Eric Roberts was already a star — they would be estranged until 2004 — and after high school she moved to New York, signed with the Click modelling agency, and took acting classes. Her first credit was a February 1987 episode of NBC's *Crime Story*, playing a juvenile rape victim. Her film debut, *Satisfaction* (1988), left no mark at all.

Three Years, Three Films

What followed was one of the fastest ascents in modern Hollywood. *Mystic Pizza* (1988) prompted Roger Ebert to call her "a major beauty with a fierce energy" and to predict the film would be remembered for the stars it launched. *Steel Magnolias* (1989) brought a first Oscar nomination and a first Golden Globe; Sally Field remembered director Herbert Ross being notoriously tough on the newcomer. Then came *Pretty Woman* (1990), a part Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, Molly Ringwald, Daryl Hannah and others had turned down. Roberts was paid $300,000. The film grossed $463 million, achieved the highest ticket sales any romantic comedy had recorded, and made her red dress permanent cinematic furniture.

The Slump and the Comeback

She then vanished. Between 1992 and 1993 her only appearance was a cameo in Altman's *The Player*, and in early 1993 *People* put her on the cover under the headline "What Happened to Julia Roberts?" A run of poorly received pictures followed — *I Love Trouble*, *Prêt-à-Porter*, *Something to Talk About*, *Mary Reilly* — before the genre she had defined rescued her. *My Best Friend's Wedding* (1997) took $299 million, *Notting Hill* (1999) took $363 million and displaced *Four Weddings and a Funeral* as the biggest British cinema hit, and *Runaway Bride* (1999) added $309 million despite mixed notices. Jihane Bousfiha of *Time* would later call her the undisputed queen of the form.

Erin Brockovich

Steven Soderbergh's 2000 film about a legal clerk taking on Pacific Gas and Electric changed the arithmetic of the industry. Roberts was paid $20 million, the first actress to command that figure, and won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild Award. Owen Gleiberman described the pleasure of watching "Roberts, with her flirtatious sparkle and undertow of melancholy"; Peter Travers noted how the film registered the emotional cost of a job that gave Erin "a first taste of self-esteem." That same year she became the first actress on *The Hollywood Reporter*'s list of the fifty most influential women in show business. In 2002 she was ranked the most bankable star in Hollywood, tied with Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks, and was paid $25 million for *Mona Lisa Smile*.

Ocean's, Broadway, Prestige

The second half of the career has been an exercise in redistributing that leverage. *Ocean's Eleven* (2001) and *Ocean's Twelve* (2004) folded her into ensembles — in the sequel her character impersonates Julia Roberts. Her 2006 Broadway debut in *Three Days of Rain* grossed nearly a million dollars in its first week and drew brutal reviews; Ben Brantley found her "only glancingly acquainted" with her character. She recovered with *Charlie Wilson's War* (2007), *August: Osage County* (2013), which brought a fourth Oscar nomination, and HBO's *The Normal Heart* (2014). Since 2018 she has largely worked in television and streaming — *Homecoming*, *Gaslit*, *Leave the World Behind* — and produced through Red Om Films, run with her sister Lisa and named for her husband Daniel Moder's surname reversed. Lancôme signed her as global ambassador in 2009 and extended the deal for a reported $50 million.

Why Julia Is Called a Genius

The claim is unusual because it rests almost entirely on presence rather than intellect, and Roberts is the first to say so. "I don't have any acting techniques," she has stated, adding that "there's nothing more boring than actors sitting around talking about acting." What she possesses instead is an instrument — the scale of the smile, the laugh, the ability to hold a close-up without apparent effort — that audiences trust on sight. Bilge Ebiri argued she was "more than a movie star — she was an existential fact." In 1995 *The New York Times* called her a "rainmaker for women's films," able to guarantee an opening weekend and green-light a project single-handed; her agent Elaine Goldsmith credited her with convincing studios that women could carry pictures as reliably as men. That is a form of genius, but an economic one: she changed what got made and what women were paid.

The counter-case is loud and comes from serious critics. John Anderson of *The Seattle Times* described "an actress who has never really been required to act." Matt Singer observed she "has rarely strayed far from the onscreen persona that made her one of the biggest movie stars in history." Mike Nichols, who directed her in *Charlie Wilson's War*, praised her intelligence and preparation while conceding her beauty sometimes overshadowed her acting. A 2009 *New Yorker* assessment suggested her technical abilities did not always match the emotional depth a role demanded. The fair verdict: her gift is charisma weaponised with unusual discipline, not range.

Legacy

She remained the biggest female box-office draw in the world for two decades, and the salary she extracted in 2000 became the benchmark every actress after her negotiated against. Geoffrey Macnab located her appeal in a blend of "the glamour of classic Hollywood stars with an approachable, down-to-earth quality" — a combination that is easy to describe and, on the evidence of every attempted successor, nearly impossible to reproduce. France made her a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in February 2025. She still works barefoot whenever a director will let her.