On 10.15.22 Julia Roberts will receive an Academy Museum Icon Award at a special gala fundraiser. Revenue from the event will benefit AMPAS and the Academy Museum (aka “Woke House“).
This is not an equivalent of Roberts (now in her mid 50s) receiving an AFI Life Achievement award, but it’s in the same ballpark. One of these years she’ll be so honored by the AFI; she might also one day receive a special career Oscar. So let’s ask what her career has really amounted to in terms of serious cred, and which performances are the real keepers.
For me the Roberts performances that really count are not her romcom and grounded-romantic-formula roles, because she’s been doing them since the late ’80s and can perform them in her sleep — Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, Everyone Says I Love You, the forthcoming Ticket to Paradise. I’m not saying her romcom performances aren’t enjoyable or effective — I’m saying they don’t seem to represent any great effort on her part. Maybe it’s unfair to say that. I recognize that “comedy is hard.”
I respect her decent-enough thrillers — Sleeping With The Enemy, The Pelican Brief, Duplicity — but we all understand that Roberts’ manner of acting never seems to fit into the thriller mode.
I do, however, worship her real-pain performances in Steven Soderbergh‘s Erin Brockovich, John Wells‘ August: Osage County, Mike Nichols‘ Closer and her recent Martha Mitchell performance in Gaslit. To me these four are bullet-proof.
And I adore the scene in Ocean’s Twelve when she plays a Julia Roberts lookalike (Tess Ocean, the ex-wife of George Clooney‘s Danny Ocean) and then talks to her actual self on the phone…the one scene in her entire career that made me fall on the floor.