Celebrity Life's Style: Julia Robert

Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the 1990s romantic comedy Pretty Woman, which grossed $464 million worldwide. After receiving Academy Award nominations for Steel Magnolias in 1990 and Pretty Woman in 1991, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2001 for her performance in Erin Brockovich. Her films My Best Friend's Wedding, Mystic Pizza, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, Valentine's Day, The Pelican Brief, Ocean's Eleven and Twelve have collectively brought box office receipts of over $2.4 billion, making her one of the most successful actors in terms of box office receipts.Julia had become one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter's annual "power list" of top-earning female stars from 2005 to 2006. Her fee for 1990's Pretty Woman was $300,000; in 2003, she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in Mona Lisa Smile. As of 2010, Julia's net worth was estimated to be $140 million.Julia has been named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" eleven times, tied with Halle Berry. In 2001, Ladies Home Journal ranked her as the 11th most powerful woman in America, ahead of then national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and former first lady Laura Bush. Julia has a production company called Red Om Films.
Julia was born in Atlanta, Georgia at Crawford Long Hospital (now Emory University Hospital Midtown), to Betty Lou (née Bredemus) and Walter Grady Roberts. Her maternal great-grandmother immigrated from Sweden. Her parents were Baptist and Catholic, and she was raised Catholic. Her older brother Eric Roberts (from whom she was estranged until 2004), sister Lisa Roberts Gillan, and niece Emma Roberts, are also actors. Julia's parents, one-time actors and playwrights, met while performing theatrical productions for the armed forces and later co-founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia, off Juniper Street in Midtown. While her mother was pregnant with Julia, she and her husband ran an acting school for children in Decatur, Georgia. The children of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King attended the school. As a thank-you for their service, Mrs. King paid the hospital bill when Julia's mother gave birth to Julia. Julia's mother filed for divorce in 1971, with the divorce being finalized early in 1972. The family moved to Smyrna, Georgia in 1972, where Julia attended Fitzhugh Lee Elementary School, Griffin Middle School, and Campbell High School. Her mother married Michael Motes and had daughter Nancy Motes in 1976. Julia's father died of cancer when she was ten.

In school, Julia played clarinet in the band. She wanted to be a veterinarian as a child. After graduating from Smyrna's Campbell High School, she headed to New York to join her siblings and pursue a career in acting. Once there, she signed with the Clack modeling agency and enrolled in acting classes. She reverted to her original name "Julia Roberts" when she discovered that a "Julie Roberts" was already registered with the Screen Actors Guild. Her niece Emma Roberts, whom Julia used to take to movie sets when she was a young girl, has joined her father and aunts in the acting business.Julia made her first big screen appearance in the film Satisfaction, released on February 12, 1988. She had previously performed a small role opposite her brother, Eric, in Blood Red (she has two words of dialogue), filmed in 1987 and released in 1989. Her first television appearance was as a juvenile rape victim in the initial season of the series Crime Story with Dennis Farina, in the episode titled "The Survivor", broadcast on February 13, 1987. Her first critical success with moviegoers was her performance in the independent film Mystic Pizza in 1988; that same year, she had a role in the fourth season finale of Miami Vice. The following year, she was featured in Steel Magnolias as a young bride with diabetes and got her first Academy Award nomination (as Best Supporting Actress) for her performance.Julia became known to worldwide audiences when she co-starred with Richard Gere in the Cinderella/Pygmalionesque story Pretty Woman in 1990. Julia won the role after the first three choices for the part, Molly Ringwald, Meg Ryan and Daryl Hannah (her co-star in Steel Magnolias), all turned it down. The role also earned her a second Oscar nomination, this time as Best Actress.

Her next box office success was the thriller Sleeping with the Enemy, playing a battered wife who escapes her demented husband, played by Patrick Bergin, and begins a new life in Iowa. She played Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's Hook in 1991, and also played a nurse in the 1991 film Dying Young. This work was followed by a two-year hiatus, during which she made no films other than a cameo appearance in Robert Altman's The Player (1992). In early 1993, she was the subject of a People magazine cover story asking, "What Happened to Julia Roberts?" She was offered the role of Annie Reed in the 1993 Sleepless in Seattle but turned it downIn 1993, she co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Pelican Brief, based on the John Grisham novel. She also starred alongside Liam Neeson in the 1996 film Michael Collins. In 1995, she appeared in season 2 of Friends (episode 13 "The One After the Superbowl"). She was offered the role of Lucy Eleanor Moderatz in the 1995 While You Were Sleeping but also turned it down.