Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American film actress and former fashion model. She shot to fame during the early 1990s after starring in the romantic comedy, Pretty Woman, opposite Richard Gere. Her career includes films such as Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, and Ocean's Eleven, which have collectively earned box office receipts well over $2 billion. She won the Best Actress Academy Award in 2001 for her critically praised turn as the title character in Erin Brockovich after two previous nominations during the 1990s. Since then, Roberts has become the highest-paid actress in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter's annual power list of top-earning female stars for four consecutive years (2002-2005). An unprecedented $25 million was paid to Roberts for her role in 2003's Mona Lisa Smile. As of 2007, Roberts' net worth was estimated around US$140,000,000.
Roberts was also the first actress to appear on the cover of Vogue and the first woman to land on the cover of GQ. She has been named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" a record-setting eleven times, tied with Halle Berry. In 2001 Ladies Home Journal ranked her as the 11th most powerful woman in America, beating out then national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and first lady Laura Bush.
It is commonly mistaken that Julia's birth name is "Julie," however, Julia has said in interviews that "Julie" was a nickname given to her by classmates in elementary school, and she never took well to it. Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia. Her father, Walter Grady Roberts, was a vacuum cleaner salesman of Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh ancestry, and her Minneapolis, Minnesota-born mother, Betty Lou Bredemus, was a one-time church secretary and a real estate agent of Swedish, German and Norwegian ancestry.Her 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 Georgia; the two divorced in 1971. Her mother later re-married to Michael Motes and had another daughter, named Nancy Motes who was born in 1976. Roberts' father died of cancer when she was ten. Her older brother and sister, Eric Roberts (from whom she was estranged for a while) and Lisa Roberts Gillan, are also actors. Roberts wanted to be a veterinarian as a child, but soon after graduating from Smyrna's Campbell High School, and after attending Georgia State University, she headed to New York to join her sister Lisa Roberts Gillan and pursue a career in acting. Once there, she signed with the Click modeling agency and enrolled in acting classes. She reverted to her original name "Julia Roberts" when she found that there was already a "Julie Roberts" registered with the Screen Actors Guild.
Her niece Emma Roberts, who she used to take to the sets when she was younger, has joined her father and aunts in the acting business. Recently, she gained a starring role on the Nickelodeon series Unfabulous and has appeared in the films Blow (2001), Aquamarine (2006) and Nancy Drew (2007).
Roberts's personal life has often been in the spotlight, a fact reflected in her Notting Hill, a romantic comedy about a famous actress falling for a bookstore owner played by Hugh Grant. Her character, Anna Scott, was said to be closely modeled on Roberts herself. (When asked in one scene how much she was paid to appear in a movie, Scott replies "fifteen million dollars" — precisely the amount Roberts had received to appear in the film.)
Roberts' has had numereous famous boyfriends, including Kiefer Sutherland, Lyle Lovett, Daniel Day-Lewis, Matthew Perry, Liam Neeson, Benjamin Bratt and Dylan McDermott. For a time, she lived with Liam Neeson. Roberts met Sutherland in 1990, when he was her co-star in Flatliners . Sutherland left his wife and children and moved in with Roberts. In August 1990, Roberts and Sutherland announced their engagement, with a wedding of 14 June 1991. Roberts cancelled the wedding when she discovered Sutherland had had an affair with a stripper named Amanda Rice. Roberts went to Europe with Jason Patric after she and Sutherland broke up. Eventually, she married country singer Lyle Lovett after the couple had known each other for a few weeks. The wedding was planned on very short notice and was held in Marion, Indiana. Two years later, in March 1995, the couple announced that they were separating.
At the Christmas '98 premiere of Stepmom, Roberts appeared with actor Benjamin Bratt. In late June 2001, Roberts and Bratt announced they were breaking up. "It's come to a kind and tenderhearted end," she said of their relationship.
Roberts met her current husband, cameraman Danny Moder, on the set of her movie The Mexican in 2000 and they began an affair. He was already married to Vera Steinberg Moder at the time and it has been widely reported that Roberts offered Danny's then wife $250,000.00 to agree to a divorce. After Moder's divorce was finalized, he and Roberts wed on Fourth of July 2002, at her ranch in Taos, New Mexico.
On November 28, 2004, they became the parents of fraternal twins, daughter Hazel Patricia and son Phinnaeus Walter. They had their third child, son Henry Daniel Moder, on June 18, 2007 in Los Angeles.
Roberts bought a penthouse in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood. She reportedly loves to shop anonymously, buying her own organic greens on weekends at the market in nearby Union Square. She and her family divide their time between their homes in New York City, Malibu, Venice Beach, California, and their 50-acre retreat in Taos.