Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. She was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing the title role in the movie Erin Brockovich.

Born Julie Fiona Roberts in Smyrna, Georgia, Roberts first caught the attention of moviegoers with her performance in the film Mystic Pizza in 1988. The following year she was featured in Steel Magnolias as a young bride battling diabetes, garnering her first Oscar nomination (as Best Supporting Actress) for her performance. She catapulted to worldwide fame co-starring with Richard Gere in the Cinderella-story Pretty Woman in 1990, which also earned her a second Oscar nod, this time as Best Actress.




Her next huge box-office success was the thriller Sleeping With the Enemy, in which she portrayed a battered wife who escapes from her husband and starts a new life. She played Tinkerbelle in Steven Spielberg's Hook in 1991, which was followed by a two- year period in which she had no acting roles 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?" Julie Roberts

Later that year, she co-starred with Denzel Washington in the highly successful The Pelican Brief, based on the John Grisham novel. Grisham wrote the lead female character, Darby Shaw, specifically for Roberts to play. For the next few years, she starred in a series of films that were critical and commercial failures, primarily because she was cast in off-beat roles that strayed too far from her persona. She broke her losing streak with the hit comedy My Best Friend's Wedding in (1997), and eventually earned a reputation as an actress who could guarantee a huge box office draw. She won critical acclaim and finally nabbed an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Erin Brockovich - a woman who had helped wage a successful lawsuit against energy giant Pacific Gas & Electric - in the 2001 movie of the same name.