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Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. She is known for starring in the romantic comedy Pretty Woman opposite Richard Gere, which grossed $463 million worldwide. After receiving Academy Award nominations for Steel Magnolias in 1990 and Pretty Woman in 1991, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2001 for her performance in Erin Brockovich. Her films, which also include romantic comedies such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Mystic Pizza, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, and crime films such as The Pelican Brief and Ocean's Eleven and Twelve have collectively brought box office receipts of over $2 billion, making her the most successful actress in terms of box office receipts.

Roberts had become one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter's annual "power list" of top-earning female stars from 2002 to 2005, until 2006, when Nicole Kidman won the top spot. Her fee for 1990's Pretty Woman was $300,000; in 2003, she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in Mona Lisa Smile. As of 2007, Roberts's net worth was estimated to be $140 million.

Roberts was the first actress to appear on the cover of Vogue. GQ once erroneously claimed she was the first woman to appear on their cover, but later retracted the statement (Carol Channing appeared on a GQ cover in 1964). She has been named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" 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. Roberts has a production company called Red Om Films, formerly Shoelace Productions ("Moder" spelled backwards, after her husband's last name).

Early life

Roberts was born in Atlanta, Georgia at Crawford Long Hospital (now Emory University Hospital Midtown), the daughter of Betty Lou (née Bredemus) and Walter Grady Roberts. Her older brother, Eric Roberts (from whom she was once estranged, but reconciled with in 2004), and sister, Lisa Roberts Gillan, are also actors. Roberts' 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 Atlanta, Georgia, off Juniper Street in Midtown. While her mother was pregnant with Roberts, she and her husband ran an acting school for children in Decatur, Georgia. The children of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King attended the school. As a thank-you for their service, Mrs. King paid the hospital bill when Roberts' mother gave birth to Julia.

Roberts' mother filed for divorce in 1971, with the divorce being finalized early in 1972. The family moved to Smyrna, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) in 1972, where Roberts attended Fitzhugh Lee Elementary School, Griffin Middle School and Campbell High School. Her mother re-married to Michael Motes and had another daughter, Nancy Motes, who was born in 1976. Roberts' father died of cancer when she was ten.

In school, Roberts played clarinet in the band. She wanted to be a veterinarian as a child, but soon after graduating from Smyrna's Campbell High School, she headed to New York to join her brother and 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 discovered that a "Julie Roberts" was already registered with the Screen Actors Guild. Her niece Emma Roberts, whom Julia used to take to movie sets when she was a young girl, has joined her father and aunts in the acting business.

Personal life

Relationships

Roberts's personal life has often been in the spotlight. She has had widely reported romantic relationships with numerous famous men, including Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott, Kiefer Sutherland, Lyle Lovett, Matthew Perry, and Benjamin Bratt. She was briefly engaged to McDermott, her Steel Magnolias co-star. She met Sutherland in 1990, when he was her co-star in Flatliners. In August 1990, Roberts and Sutherland announced their engagement, with an elaborate studio-planned wedding scheduled for June 14, 1991. Roberts broke the engagement three days before the wedding. Roberts subsequently went to Ireland with Jason Patric, a friend of Sutherland's. On June 27, 1993, she married country singer Lyle Lovett. The wedding took place at St. James Lutheran Church in Marion, Indiana, near where Lovett was appearing on tour with his band. In March 1995, the couple separated, and subsequently divorced.

In 1998, Roberts began dating Law & Order star Benjamin Bratt, and he was her escort for the March 25, 2001 Academy Awards ceremony at which she won her Oscar. Three months later, in June 2001, Roberts and Bratt announced that they were no longer a couple. "It's come to a kind and tenderhearted end," she said of their relationship.

Roberts met her current husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, on the set of her movie The Mexican in 2000. At the time, Moder was married to Vera Steimberg Moder. He filed for divorce a little over a year later, and after it was finalized, he and Roberts wed on July 4, 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 "Finn" Walter. Their third child, son Henry Daniel Moder, was born on June 18, 2007, in Los Angeles.

Charities

Roberts has given her time and resources to UNICEF as well as to other charitable organizations. In Spring 1995, Roberts, an enthusiastic supporter of UNICEF, asked if she could meet some of the relief agency's neediest recipients. On May 10, she arrived in Port-au-Prince, as she said, "to educate myself". The poverty she found was overwhelming. "My heart is just bursting", she said. UNICEF officials hoped that her six-day visit would trigger an outburst of giving: $10 million in aid was sought at the time.

In 2000, Roberts narrated Silent Angels, a documentary about Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, which was shot in Los Angeles, Baltimore and New York. The documentary was designed to help raise public awareness about the disease. In July 2006, Earth Biofuels announced Roberts as a spokeswoman for the company and as chair of the company's newly formed Advisory Board promoting the use of renewable fuels.