Few actors in Hollywood have come to command the aura like that of Julia Roberts. Even fewer have come to essay versatile roles with such commanding ease as Hollywood’s Pretty Woman! Simply put, the equation surrounding some of Hollywood’s leading ladies is like this:
When there’s romance on the big screen, your best bet is Rachel McAdams or . If you want to laugh out loud and enjoy something light-hearted or even hilarious, perhaps either among Tina Fey or Amy Schumer is your best guide. Where it comes to portraying some of the serious characters that have a lot of gravity in them, then Meryl Streep can save the day for you.
If you are looking out for resolute, even spunky character roles that have a sense of flair about them, then look no further than Tilda Swinton. Boy, isn’t she magical? But that being said, if there’s someone who can do it all and do it in her own, inimitable style, then it’s Julia Roberts.
She the is classic antidote to a dull and weird day that has nothing substantial to it. She’s the answer to a prayer, the music to which you can become the lyric, the evening choir in a church and the presence of a candid smile when nothing’s quite going your way- ain’t that right?
In all these years of Julia Roberts having portrayed with her quintessential magnificence a unique array of roles, one’s simply stunned that how come the studious (and inspiring) Katherine Watson of Mona Lisa Smile play the luscious Vivian Ward of Pretty Woman, how come the purposeful Erin Brokovich, who was out there to compete in, strictly speaking, a man’s world, be Julianne Potter, the heart and soul as also the dear friend in behind My Best Friend’s Wedding?
And that being told, how did Julia Roberts, who convincingly essayed such divergent characters, pull off an Anna Scott in Notting Hill, rendering a touch of humanness to the super-star DNA of the character Hugh Grant fell for?
To this day, we remember the famous sequence in the bookshop, minutes before the 1999-release’ end, where Scott comes to Will and says, “Am just a little girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her!”
Such outright honesty, heart-melting charm and the effervescence! Truth be told, if there’s something that we all have come to miss about Julia Roberts in these last twenty years in Hollywood, then it’s a dearth of her presence in movies like Notting Hill: the captivating genre to which we all think she still belongs, RomCom.
With that being said, a common question concerning the Mystic Pizza actor is why didn’t she star in many RomComs over these years? Just what was she doing and why didn’t she turn up the allure in essaying characters like she did in Notting Hill and Larry Crowne!
In fact, safe to say that the last RomCom Roberts starred in was Larry Crowne, which also starred Tom Hanks right, since “Wonder” opposite Owen Wilson wasn’t much of a comedy and was a drama.
Guess what, the queen of acting has herself answered what remains, to this day, one of the profoundest queries concerning her career. And the following is what she had to say:
“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. They didn’t exist until this movie that I just did that Ol Parker wrote and directed.”
That told, she was also asked by The New York Times whether she was consciously staying adrift of the RomCom genre, to which the long locked beauty had the following to say:
“There wasn’t a single good script, not one. Here’s the thing: If I’d thought something was good enough, I would have done it.”
But while Notting Hill was a movie, as also a role, of a lifetime, one truly wonders whether something like that could be recreated again. To be precise, can there be another RomCom with Julia Roberts in it that manages to sweep the audiences off their feet much like a Notting Hill did?