Born in Smyrna, Georgia in October 28, 1967, Julia Roberts has been a household name. After her brother, Eric Roberts, had achieved some success in Hollywood, Julia decided to try her hand in it as well. Thank God for that, or we might have never enjoyed some of the best movies if it weren’t for her acting prowess. Having bagged numerous awards for various roles, she has proved to everyone her talent and how she deserves to be one of the highest paid Hollywood actors in the world. She first caught her big break through Mystic Pizza and Satisfaction. Her biggest success was from Pretty Woman, one of her most notable movies where audiences instantly fell in love with her for her romantic comedy films. Roberts has also been named one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people in the world eleven times and named by Men’s Health as one of the 100 Hottest Women of All Time. The actress, who has English, German, Swedish, Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry, has numerous popular films under her belt truly shows us that she’s a force not to be reckoned with. As a tribute to her film contributions as an actor and producer over the past years, we roundup her top 10 movies, perfect for those avid Julia Roberts fans out there.
10 – I Love Trouble
Julia Roberts plays Sabrina Peterson, an ambitious and skilled reporter that does whatever it takes to investigate and find the truth in every story. She teams up with a rival reporter in Chicago, Peter Brackett, who is played by Nick Nolte. In this movie, the two rivals set up to find out the truth about a train accident but later find out that was all part of a conspiracy. Throughout the movie, the two characters continually bicker and fight, much like the rival papers they are working for. You can expect them to start a flourishing romance in spite of their clashing personalities and lifestyles in this 1994 rom-com classic.
9 – Eat Pray Love
Elizabeth Gilbert, as portrayed by Julia Roberts in this film, is a 32-year-old married woman with a successful career and an unhappy marriage. Following her divorce, Elizabeth tries to make a new lifestyle change by getting to know herself more. To do so, she enlists travelling to three different countries to enjoy the life of food, spiritual guidance and most importantly, love. She spent four months in Italy eating and enjoying life, three months in India to find her spirituality and ended her year of travelling in Bali, Indonesia to look for the balance between the two and ended up finding love with a Brazilian businessman played by Javier Bardem. The film is an inspirational movie about finding yourself and enjoying one’s life and the pleasures it has to offer.
8 – Valentine’s Day
With an all start cast, it’s hard to find where Kate Hazeltine finds her story in this movie. However, Valentine’s Day showcases a wonderful cast to portray different kinds of love you can encounter on any day, although this one focuses on the day of love itself. In this movie, Julia Roberts plays a captain in the US Army on her way home to LA on a one day leave. She encounters the wealthy Holden Wilson (Bradley Cooper) on the plane and has a chat about how in love she must be to spend her one day leave travelling to LA. While waiting for a taxi in the airport, the gorgeous Holden Wilson offers her his limousine to help her get to her destination on time. Not much screen time for Julia Roberts, but the conclusion of her character’s story is definitely a tear-jearker that’s not to miss.
7 – Erin Brockovich
A dramatization of the real life story of Erin Brockovich, which Julia Roberts portrays, is definitely one for the books. She won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors’ Guild Award and BAFTA award for best actress in this movie. In the film, Erin Brockovich battles PG&E who is responsible for many illnesses cause by the chromium in their groundwater. This movie definitely shows a lot of battles, but all won because of Erin Brockovich. A story of a single mother with three children and no job but hired for the sake of pity and triumphs more than she ever thought possible.
6 – Steel Magnolias
A 1989 comedy drama, the movie centers around a group of women whose lives come together in a small town in Louisiana through a small beauty parlor. The group of friends have different views and different ages, as well as different struggles ranging from marriage, children and even health problems. The story of Steel Magnolias is one about friendship and ultimately, one about love and pain. In their attempts to live a life of happiness, the women of this film showcase how they can be as dainty and delicate like Magnolias but with great strength to themselves and in attacking their own problems.
5 – The Pelican Brief
Two Supreme Court Justices are murdered in an assassination. Tulane Univeristy school student Darby Shaw, played by Julia Roberts, write a brief regarding her theory on why and who must have killed the two Justices. She presents this brief to her law professor and lover who is later on killed. Before he died, though, he was able to give a copy of the brief to a friend in the FBI. After multiple murders on different characters and escapes from attempted murder on her, Derby finds justice after following a trail of clues on her theory, which was correct all along, also with the help of a political reporter Gray Grantham, played by Denzel Washington.
4 – Runaway Bride
Ike Graham, played by Richard Gere, is a columnist for USA Today with articles usually about the opposite sex and writes at the last minute. He hears the story of Maggie Caarpenter, played by Julia Roberts, who is known in their hometown as the Runaway Bride. He quickly writes an article without checking facts and submits it to his publisher who is also his ex-wife. Maggie gets Ike fired by his own ex-wife due to complaints about wrongly written facts about her. Ike still follows the story, which he believes still has life in it, and travels back to their hometown to stalk his newest prey, Maggie, who is engaged for the fourth time. In continuous attempt to outdo each other, the two gain a deeper understanding of Maggie and the reason behind her Runaway Bride title. Maggie also finds her way to realizing who she really is.
3 – My Best Friend’s Wedding
My Best Friend’s wedding is a 1997 true romantic comedy classic. Julia Roberts plays Julianne Potter who meets her long time best friend Michael O’Neal, played by Dermot Mulroney, three weeks before her 28th birthday to find out that he’s already engaged to Kimmy Wallace played by Cameron Diaz four days before the wedding. This is a total disappointment for Julianne who’s fallen in love with Michael, and has expected to marry him because they had a deal in college that if they were both unmarried by the time they turned 28, they would marry each other. Throughout the movie, Julianne is continuously tangled up in her own web of lies in hopes of sabotaging the upcoming wedding and relationship of Michael and Kimmy, mainly because she’s finally fallen in love with her best friend and missed her chance.
2 – Notting Hill
William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is a simple bookshop owner in Notting Hill struggling to make ends meet. Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), the most beautiful and famous America actress enters his bookshop one day and gets to meet her. After the encounter, he still couldn’t believe what had happened and ended up running into her once again, but this time, he spilled orange juice all over her pristine white shirt. He offers his nearby apartment as a place for her to change clothes. Over the next few months, they get to know each other better and develop a romance. However, it’s a lot more difficult than what expected, as it’s not easy to date a woman well-loved by everyone to the point that they couldn’t be around close friends and more so in front of the invasive press and paparazzi.
1 – Pretty Woman
Julia Roberts received a golden Globe award as well as an Academy Award nomination for her role as the prostitute Vivian Ward in this iconic film. Opposite Richard Gere who plays the wealthy and successful businessman, Edward Lewis, they encounter each other on Hollywood Boulevard where Vivian hangs out and finds her clients as a prostitute. They agree to stay with each other for a week while he’s in town to keep up with the image he has to keep. The two start to have a liking in each other, with Edward slowly becoming a better person, straying away from his ruthless businessman personality and Vivian getting a fresh new start on her life.
