by Paul Fischer
by Paul Fischer
Academy Award nominee Julia Roberts remains Hollywood's golden girl, and odds on favorite to win this year's Best Actress Oscar. In her latest movie, The Mexican, Roberts teams up with Brad Pitt in an irreverent black comedy, in which she plays a highly-strung woman kidnapped by a gay hit man. Pitt plays Jerry Welbach, who is given two ultimatums. His mob boss wants him to travel to Mexico to get a priceless antique pistol called "The Mexican" or he will suffer the consequences. The other ultimatum comes from his girlfriend Samantha, (Roberts) who wants him to end his association with the mob. Jerry figures that being alive, although in trouble with his girlfriend, is the better alternative so he heads south of the border. Finding the pistol is easy but getting it home is a whole other matter. The pistol supposedly carries a curse - a curse Jerry is given every reason to believe, especially when Samantha is held hostage by the hit man Leroy (played by The Sopranos' James Gandolfini) to ensure the safe return of the pistol. Sporting an orange leather jacket and sense of hammer intact, the radiant star talked to Paul Fischer in Los Angeles.
CrankyCritic:
Does it gratify you that at this point in your career you have been nominated
for another Oscar for Erin Brockovich?
Julia Roberts: Especially for a movie I love. It's very exciting and overwhelming.
Yeah, it's a good time for me.
CrankyCritic: How important, generally, is an Oscar individually, for you
as an actor, as opposed to the film as a whole?
Julia Roberts: Well I mean, outside of your own home it's the highest praise
you can get as an actor, isn't it? So yeah, it's exciting.
CrankyCritic: The Mexican was initially going to be a small film. I'm
just wondering what attracted you to this piece of material and how did it come
across your desk, etc?
Julia Roberts: Well I just thought it was incredibly original. It was sent
to me and I was told Brad Pitt was interested; this guy Gore Verbinski
is going to direct, have a look at it. I read it and was sort of taken by ability
to take every genre known to film and kind of put it into one script, have
it make sense and be interesting.
CrankyCritic: What was it about this character that appealed to you,
that made her different from others that you've recently played?
Julia Roberts: She's just so wacky and wonderfully misguided in her pursuit
of enlightenment. The fact that she really thinks if she reads all these
books, then she'll understand all her problems; I love that about her.
CrankyCritic:
Are you emotional as she is?
Julia Roberts: She's pretty high strung. Maybe if I slept more I'd be a
lot closer to her emotional level but I think one has to put in some pretty good
wrack time to get to that place. But I like how emotional she is. She's got her
heart on her sleeve. The reason why I was intrigued by her, was because I think
she's really well intended, really motivated, she has all the best reasons for
what she's doing, she's just going about them in a kind of wonderfully messy and
erratic way. I understand her goal; I just don't necessarily subscribe
to her approach so in that way, so it's kinda fun to figure out her
way of figuring things out.
CrankyCritic: How hard is it for you to remain so grounded? You're defined
as this larger-than-life movie star. What is it that you do that makes you realize,
as you said in Notting Hill, it's not real. How do you get past that?
Julia Roberts: Your perspective would probably present more of a challenge
to me than my reality; do you know what I mean? The way that you see my reality
would probably take a lot more effort to get through all of that, to just have
a day and be a girl; for me it's not a matter of something I do or don't do, it
just is.
CrankyCritic: Being who are, you obviously get a lot of scripts and
a lot of good ones. Is there a point where you have to say: I do want time
off; I can't keep on doing this all the time, just because I'm hot. That must
be difficult for you with the pressure that you're under.
Julia Roberts: It's not difficult at all; it's the easiest thing in the
world to do. I mean the power of this job is in the 'no'. The 'yes' is easy; if
you want to do something, then it's 'yeah, I want to do that. Saying no is the
big moment. Yeah, it's good, but somebody else can make it or it wait for me to
go on vacation or it can go away.
CrankyCritic: Have you ever said no to anything you wish you hadn't
said no to?
Julia
Roberts: No, isn't that lucky for me?
CrankyCritic: But it's easy for you to say no?
Julia Roberts: I find it incredibly easy. But I got into good practice
with 'no' early on, because when I was 23 with everyone saying all these lovely
things about me, I was reading scripts that I just didn't like, so at a time when
I didn't have a lot of money to be frivolous about not having an
income, I said 'No' for two years. It wasn't until I made The Pelican Brief
that I realized that it wasn't about working just to work; you have to really
want to do what you're doing and I think that there is value in work, and value
in staying home.
CrankyCritic: Has your taste in scripts changed much?
Julia Roberts: I'm sure it has changed since I started making movies because
I'm a grown up now, if you hadn't noticed. So sure, my tastes changed, and something
has to be really good for me to leave my house, as opposed to just: That's pretty
good, I think I can make that work. Maybe now it has to exceptionally
good. But every really good script that I've ever read and believed in, that
is the sum of the movies that I've made.
CrankyCritic: You have the ability to change emotions quickly. Even
Gore Verbinski (director of The Mexican) commented that your real talent
blows him away. Does that effect you that you can still wow people in your industry?
Julia Roberts: To wow Gore was my sole purpose on the set of The Mexican;
that's why I go to work every day, to try to impress him. He's so smart and so
clear and I just really want him to say: Yeah, OK, we've got it.
CrankyCritic: You're shooting two films at the moment, yes?
Julia Roberts: No, that's just a rumor started here in the hospitality
suite.
CrankyCritic: There's America's Sweethearts, right?
Julia Roberts: Yep, which is what I'm doing right now.
CrankyCritic: Now since that film satirizes press junkets, is doing this
junket for The Mexican research for you?
Julia Roberts: No, we already shot the junket. I'm just the assistant,
and so I brought in the water, did some knitting and I got the rest of the day
off. Catherine Zeta-Jones had to sit there and answer all the questions.
CrankyCritic: I understand that you and Brad [Pitt] have been wanting
to make a movie together for over a decade. 
How
did this one bear fruit?
Julia Roberts: Brad said yesterday it was because all the movies I liked
that I wanted him to make, stunk. Don't worry he was kidding. You know what it
is? It's kind of a testament to the sweet nature of this movie, and the
idea and concepts of fate and timing, and that which passes through our lives,
because this is a movie that truly came out of a conversation between two people,
one of whom works with Brad, one of whom works with me, at a social event, chit
chatting. That simple. It was just one of those trains that was destined to pull
out of the station.
CrankyCritic: And how was it to finally work with him?
Julia Roberts: It was so great. He's so lovely, which I had always known,
but you get on a movie set and sometimes people change. And Brad is the sunniest
guy that I know.
CrankyCritic: You both have a lot of screen time, but not just together
in this film. Do you hope to work with him again in the future where you actually
have a lot of scenes together?
Julia Roberts: Ocean's 11, just a couple of months away.
CrankyCritic: So with that big cast, you have a lot of scenes together?
Julia Roberts: Actually, I only have scenes with Andy Garcia, George
Clooney and Brad Pitt.
CrankyCritic: Geez, what a shocking line up of guys.
Julia Roberts: Yeah I know. I don't know how I'm going to make it through.
CrankyCritic: What is it about Soderbergh that attracts such a high caliber
of actors?
Julia Roberts: He is a bona fide genius, certainly. He has a respect and
love for movies that is paramount to being a really good director and he knows
how to tell a story so well to that topic. All of his movies are very different
because he doesn't just 'Soderbergh' every movie; he really takes care of the
stories that he tells. And he's also nice to be 
around;
he's just a nice, smart guy and to serve him is to feel as though you're serving
a higher purpose.
CrankyCritic: Was your character in Ocean's 11 in the original Rat
Pack version?
Julia Roberts: Yeah, Angie Dickinson, right? But this isn't a remake
but more a massive retelling. The script is so smart, so gripping. When I first
read it, it was the old actor's joke that when you read a script it's bullshit,
bullshit my line, bullshit, bullshit my line, etc. I don't necessarily subscribe
to that, it's more, lines, lines, bullshit stage direction, line, line. But in
Ocean's 11, I probably only have 37 lines in the whole script, and found
it solo gripping; it's really compelling.
CrankyCritic: Obviously it's different from his two previous films, devoid
of a moral center.
Julia Roberts: That's true, there's no moral center to Ocean's 11,
it's about burglars.
CrankyCritic: What do you like the least about this movie business
and what do you relish?
Julia Roberts: I guess what I like the least is would be that there doesn't
seem to be too much interest or room for the simple truth. I think what I like
the best is that I get to, once or twice a year, go off to interesting places,
such as Mexico on this, where I'd never been before, with some traveling band
of gypsies and try to tell a good story.
CrankyCritic: When you mentioned the simple truth as being a negative
factor, not telling on whose part?
Julia Roberts: I just think that in the big scheme of the world, the way
media deals with people in show business, is that the fiction it fodders is so
salivated after and so the simple truth doesn't really seem to serve much of a
purpose.
CrankyCritic: Is there any simple truth in your life, which you
would like to tell people?
Julia Roberts: No, because nobody cares, so I don't care t offer it. I'm
so peaceful and content with what I know is my truth, I'm years
over trying to go: No, no, you don't understand, because at one point you realize:
Oh wait it's not about that you have no ability to comprehend, it's about you
having no interest in what I'm really saying. So at that
point, the battle's over.