Julia Roberts has been a movie star for many years, and for the past 18 years she has been playing the lead role in an epic called "Modern Family."
It's no secret that almost 18 years ago, the moment Julia Roberts became a mom, she put acting on the back burner.
Of course, even Roberts' trunk is an integral part of Hollywood's dreams. But after her twins, Hazel and Phinnaeus, were born on November 28, 2004, her child wasn't at the center of her universe, which didn't make any sense. (It really started before they were born, and the chance to play "pregnant Julia Roberts" was already written into 2004's Ocean Twelve.) ）
"By the time we had kids, I had accomplished something and felt safe about that part of my life," the Oscar-winning man told The Wall Street Journal in 2014, "we" were her and photographer husband Danny Maude. "I am happy to enter the family phase of my life in a sincere way."
In fact, "for a long time," she continues, the kids "didn't even know I had a job because I was often at home." ”
The late Mike Nichols, who directed Roberts in 2004's "More Recent" and 2007's Charlie Wilson's War, proved her starring role as a mom, telling the Wall Street Journal, "That's what Julia does best, sustaining their real lives." It's trifles to tell stories. When you visit them, no one works in their home, cleaning their halls. There were toys everywhere, just Julia, Danny and the kids. She always slipped away from the center. ”
In October 2018, Roberts told Gwyneth Paltrow on The goop podcast that admitting to taking a step back from work and focusing on motherhood was an "incredible luxury," and after 18 years of extremely busy, lucrative filmmaking, she felt "I've earned time to do whatever I want, to be with these new people in our family." ”
Her children eventually heard about her way of making a living – but even so, her professional legendary nature can be hard to grasp if you haven't witnessed the days of Pretty Woman, Notting Hill or Erin Brockovich.
"I don't think they'll ever really realize it," Roberts, who turned 55 on Oct. 28, admitted to Oprah Winfrey as he sat down with Harper's Harper's Bazaar media mogul in 2018. "I think I told you once, when they started figuring it out, like, 'Are you famous?' I said, 'I think a lot of people might have seen the movies I was in, or maybe know who I am.' ’”
Roberts recalled that the children chewed for about an hour and then asked her, "Are you more famous than Taylor Swift?" ”
Kids can really say the worst things. We suspect that when Roberts took them on Swift's 1989 tour in 2015, their minds were so shocked that their mother was invited to share the stage with the headlines. ("She was very kind to the kids I had never been to a show before, they were big fans," Roberts told Extra about the experience.) "She said, 'Would you mind being on stage while singing and dancing?' I said to my kids, 'Well, what do you think?' They all said, 'Oh, Mom, you have to do this!' My youngest son said, 'Only do this if you want to, Mom.' 'It's so sweet! ”）
Not that Hazel, Finn (as mom and dad call him) and their brother Henry were born on June 18, 2007, they grew up without clues, their parents didn't have the typical 9-to-5, whether it's all the travel, or playing in the locker rooms of movie sets and Broadway theaters, or occasionally letting the Oscar winners (except their mom) stop by their home in Malibu, where they've lived since they became a family of five.
Roberts told The Wall Street Journal: "We're grateful that we can be like any other family on the street. "Frankly, I don't question it."
Unlike their neighbors (or, perhaps, just like them, Malibu is a very nice place), though, they have a few other homes, including a 30-acre ranch near Taos, New Mexico, where Roberts and Maude tied the knot on April 4, 2002, and the actress has historically liked to spend as much time as possible. But since the kids went to school in Southern California, most of the magic — family dinners, holiday baking, playing mahjong with friends, knitting and needlepricking, birthday parties, football games, surfing and skateboarding — has happened in this place.
"Some days, when you've made breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen, it's time to start lunch, and when you're done, you think there has to be a menu that we can order from," Roberts told The Telegraph in 2009. "But some days, it's very creative, it's very fun, and my kids will help me, and like any mom or wife, it's just part of your day. Some days it's very fun, and sometimes, it's a chore. ”
While the children are getting older, certain things haven't changed, except that they have become more important to Roberts as a mother. Eating together "really made sense, and that was a time when we had some incredible conversations," Roberts told Style in 2017. "I usually have breakfast and dinner with my kids every day. I think it's really important, you know, to start putting things together and then working on and sorting them out together. ”
They're also good diners: actress tells E! News (and her co-star in 2017's Marvel Owen Wilson impressed) that Finn actually loves salmon with brown rice, and she has no problem letting her kids eat their vegetables. "I don't think I had the right salad until I was 20 — I don't share it with them," Roberts noted.
She attributes their unfussy palette in part to all the trips they do — "when you travel, you have to eat what you give" — but at the same time, their mom happens to be a very good cook.
Although Roberts also became Hollywood's highest-paid actress, her children were treated as a full regular mom at home.
"My husband and I are very consistent on this, and I think our lives with our children are very normal," Roberts explained on ITV's Lorraine show in 2019. "I mean, obviously we have advantages that we didn't have as a kid, but I think that's the unique part of it, from my childhood. I'm raising my kids now – I don't want them to go through some of the struggles I've been through, but at the same time, you do need to know how to make a bed, how to do laundry, and how to cook a meal. ”
She continued: "These are important life skills, so you have to weigh the differences between some of the difficulties you see, or things I missed as a kid, but they also have to stick to their own race. They must have their own experiences. ”
At the same time, many of the things Roberts has experienced over the past 30 years aren't entirely her own, and she tries not to let feedback from strangers touch her core, whether the comments are negative or positive. She told Paltrow, "When you have kids and you come home from an event and you're wearing this big gown and high heels and diamonds, it's like, 'Can I have a snack?'" And then you go, 'Yes. '”
Paltrow agreed, "It's very grounded. ”
Hazel got a closer look at this gorgeous life, though, in July 2021, when she made her red carpet debut with her father at the 16-year-old Cannes Film Festival at a screening of Shawn Pan's Flag Day, with Maude as director of photography.
The outdoor loving Los Angeles native occasionally shares photos or videos of her kids on Instagram (often very cinematic), but it's easily Hazel's most prominent outing to date — though we know from her mother that the child is beyond her age.
In 2017, Roberts shared with InStyle that her daughter had just donated her hair to make wigs for children with cancer. "It's a big deal for a girl who is about to turn 13, she has cascading blonde hair that has been commented on by many," said the actress. "But she's so good and brave. She thinks it's something else. ”
Earlier that year, she took Hazel to the inaugural Women's March in Washington, D.C., and both mother and daughter were distraught after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election.
Roberts said of Winfrey in 2018: "I want her to feel like she still has a place in the world, and even if other people are now presidents, she can still believe in what she believes." For me, it's very powerful for me. Let her be my leader in a way, into this space of marching and participating in being a citizen of this country. ”
Having lost her own father when she was 9 years old, Roberts clearly enjoyed watching her children become their own, cherishing all the moments, no matter how ordinary they were ("I've always loved back-to-school shopping, and I realize I still love it!"). "She tells people) or milestones." There's no way to describe it as silly or ridiculous because everything in my head ends with an exclamation point," she told Very Stylish. "The thing is, we have these three people who completely reflect our feelings for each other."
Roberts and Maude met in the 2000 action film The Mexican and have been almost inseparable ever since.
"Twenty...#can'tstopsmiling...#can'tstopkissing!" Roberts captioned her July 4 Instagram post to mark their 20th wedding anniversary, and this photo was taken while kissing.
At the premiere of the new romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise on September 7, she wore a black Alexander McQueen dress with a custom heart-shaped pattern surrounding her child's initials "JR + DM," "2002," "2004," and "The Big Years." 2007", and crystal embroidery with the words "Hope", "Darling" and "Love".
On The goop Podcast, Roberts called being with Maude a real "sea change" in her life. Meeting him "was the first time and my life will never remain the same in the most incredible, indescribable way," she shared. "It's some kind of alchemy. To this day, until this moment, he's really just my favorite person... We're lucky that we really, really like each other. "The longest time they were separated during their marriage was seven weeks – they made sure it only happened once. Phone conversations were the more common way to communicate at the time, so when they first used Skype, she showed Finn, then 4, "Look, there's dad," Roberts recalled, breaking down in tears.
When they reunited, "I just remember we were all hugging, just in a big bunch, and Danny said, 'Okay, so let's stop doing that.'" I was like, 'Yes. ’”
In most cases, they don't work long hours at the same time – unless they work together.
The 2015 thriller "The Secret in Their Eyes" was one of six they worked on together, in which Roberts played the grieving mother of a murdered daughter. When asked how she prepared for such a stressful role, she told Working Mother, referring to her husband, "I was full of blind faith in my preparation because I was right there in the safest place in the world." ”
While it has the potential to be an unforgettable experience, Roberts said she had no choice but to leave work on set at the end of each day. "It has to [get done]," she explains, "because as long as you're fully invested in it, you want it to be so real, you want people to have an emotional experience, and that's acting." Everything will happen. Nothing, I will be able to drive home with my husband and have dinner with our healthy children, for which I am deeply grateful. In addition to being consistent in building a solid foundation of life skills for their children, she and Maude have had to think more about how to talk to them about what's going on in the world in recent years (again, in what seems like a stark contrast to their rather idyllic family life).
"Our country isn't at its best right now, and that can be very frustrating and frustrating," Roberts encouraged her 10.2 million Instagram followers to vote in 2020 using the Notting Hill-inspired meme, she told People magazine in 2017. "You have to not give up hope. This is the time when you must rise as a community, as a family, and as a nation, and try to make your voice heard. That's what I have to instill in my children, who are certainly old enough to understand the politics and things that are happening in the world.
"It's very important for my husband and me to be honest with them and help them feel like they still have a say in what they believe."