Actress Julia Roberts has a big year of movie and TV ahead of her. While she is set to star alongside George Clooney in the upcoming romantic-comedy Ticket to Paradise, the actress has been selective about the roles she’s taken on in the past two decades. In a new interview with The New York Times, Roberts revealed why it’s been years since fans have seen her iconic smile grace the big screen in any romcoms.
Julia explained, “People sometimes misconstrue the amount of time that’s gone by that I haven’t done a romantic comedy as my not wanting to do one. If I had read something that I thought was that Notting Hill level of writing or My Best Friend’s Wedding level of madcap fun, I would do it.” She added, “They didn’t exist until this movie that I just did that Ol Parker wrote and directed.”
While referencing Ticket to Paradise with Clooney, she continued, “But even with that, I thought, well, disaster, because this only works if it’s George Clooney. Lo and behold, George felt it only worked with me. Somehow we were both able to do it, and off we went.” Roberts, who also stars alongside Sean Penn in Starz’s upcoming series, Gaslit, gushed over both experiences.
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She said, “To go from John and Martha Mitchell, to play these scenes with the greatest dramatic actor, I think, of my generation in Sean Penn, and then run around Australia with George playing these very funny scenes I’m living my acting dreams.” Roberts’ decision to step back from filming for a while was also due in part to her most important role of all time, being mom to her three children, 17-year-old twins, daughter Hazel and son Phinnaeus and 14-year-old son Henry.
The actress revealed, “For so much of my children’s younger life they would see their dad go off and I would work a little, but they almost didn’t notice.” “It was like I was only gone when they were napping or something. But as they get older, and particularly with my daughter, I do have a sense of responsibility for showing my children that I can be creative and that it’s meaningful to me so meaningful that for periods of time I will choose to focus on that almost more than my family, which has been hard for me to come to terms with.”