Why Julia Roberts Put Family Over Career: ‘A Deep Gratitude’
By Movieguide® Contributor
For actress Julia Roberts, choosing family over career hasn’t been hard, but playing roles that show skin has been.
“In an interview with British Vogue, the actress, 56, opened up about having the ability to pause her work life to focus on her family, saying that she feels lucky that her career success came before she wanted to start a family. Roberts is mom to twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 19, as well as son Henry, 16, whom she shares with husband Danny Moder, 54,” PEOPLE reported.
The NOTTING HILL actress calls it a “luxury” that she could stay home with her kids.
“Well, I think that the luckiest aspect of my work life/family life is that the success of my work life came earlier,” Roberts said. “So by the time I had the success of my family life and had a husband and children who wanted to stay at home, I had been working for 18 years. And so I felt that I had the luxury. I didn’t have to pick one or the other.”
Roberts feels blessed that she hasn’t been pressured to choose between her family and her career.
“It was easy to pause work life to nurture my home life. And so, because I have girlfriends who were having to juggle being at work and having to go into the bathroom, and you know, get out that breast pump, I sort of went through that with them by proxy,” Roberts said.
“To be allowed the luxury of staying home and being with my family, I had a deep gratitude for that time,” she said.
Movieguide® previously reported how Roberts fully embraces her role as a wife and mother:
“Here’s the thing: If I’d thought something (a film/TV project) was good enough, I would have done it,” Roberts shared. “But I also had three kids in the last 18 years.”
“That raises the bar even more because then it’s not only ‘Is this material good?’ It’s also the math equation of my husband’s work schedule and the kids’ school schedule and summer vacation,” the actress explained. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, I think I want to do this.’ I have a sense of great pride in being home with my family and considering myself a homemaker.”
Roberts also said that she feels a “sense of responsibility” to show “my children that I can be creative and that it’s meaningful to me – so meaningful that for periods of time I will choose to focus on that almost more than my family, which has been hard for me to come to terms with.”
In her interview with British Vogue, Roberts also got candid about why she says no to nude scenes.
“You know, not to be criticizing others’ choices, but for me to not take off my clothes in a movie or be vulnerable in physical ways is a choice that I guess I make for myself,” the actress said.
“You know, it’s not really what I do,” she continued. “So if you are going ask me to do it, you have to expect it to be turned down. You know, as a mom of three, I feel like that.”
Roberts said she had the “hardest” time with her role as a movie actress in NOTTING HILL.
“I was so uncomfortable! I mean, we’ve talked about this so many times, but I almost didn’t take the part because it just seemed – oh, it just seemed so awkward. I didn’t even know how to play that person,” she said.
She revealed that she felt too uncomfortable in her set clothes for the “I’m just a girl scene” in the movie, so she wore her own.
“My driver, lovely Tommy, I sent him back to my flat that morning. I said, “Go into my bedroom and grab this, this and this out of my closet. And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan,’” she told British Vogue.
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