Julia
Her Life
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Julia Roberts represents a return to the glamour of the great Hollywood stars of another era. Fans flock to her movies, and she's a staple cover subject of People magazine and every entertainment show imaginable, but her real life has only been seen in tabloid glimpses until now. James Spada has gone back to Julia's beginnings in Athens, Georgia to unearth fascinating facts about her family and her early dating life. And he's followed her career from movie to movie-both on screen and behind the screen-to show fans what the private face of Julia really is.
As an artist, Julia has changed dramatically from the talented but sheltered girl who found fame first with a role in the independent movie "Mystic Pizza" and became the exuberant star whose "Pretty Woman" delighted audiences everywhere before becoming an Oscar-winning actress capable of taking on the toughest roles. As a person, she's grown from a skittish and gangly girl moving through relationships with co-stars to become an assured woman making her own bold decisions about how to live her life.
Julia will delight fans with its level of detail and fresh information, as well as its thoughtfulness about the life and career of a truly vibrant and complex star.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
According to Spada, star biography specialist (Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, Jacqueline Kennedy), Julia Roberts inspires every response, from the accusation by high school classmates that she "liked to steal other girls' boyfriends" to Woody Allen's praise: "She's bright, beautiful, and a pleasure to work with." This duality makes her an intriguing but unsympathetic character here. So much evidence is presented about Roberts pro and con that the book becomes a biographical mystery, inviting readers to draw their own conclusions. A self-proclaimed ugly duckling who "never really fit" in early childhood, Roberts was strongly inspired by actor brother Eric. The book moves briskly from Roberts's breakthrough role in Mystic Pizza to superstardom with Pretty Woman, a part she researched by interviewing prostitutes. Roberts "does her emotional homework," declares director Joel Schumacher during their collaboration on Flatliners, a film that co-starred her with one-time fianc Kiefer Sutherland. Other lovers who emerge with colorful clarity include Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jason Patric and country singer ex-husband Lyle Lovett. Although Spada cuttingly characterizes Roberts and Lovett as "beauty and the beast," he delineates their relationship less sharply than the other liaisons (although Matthew Perry of Friends is a vividly etched presence). Spada recounts the Roberts Nick Nolte feud during I Love Trouble and highlights the ambivalence so many feel about her by quoting Steven Spielberg, who praised her while directing Hook and criticized her on 60 Minutes. Readers won't be as enchanted with this box-office sweetheart as they were before beginning the story, but they're likely to become caught up in Spada's incisive portrait of her personal and professional tribulations.
