Julia Roberts Is Finally a British Vogue Cover Star!

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Screen icon Julia Roberts has reigned in La La Land since she was 21, and now? She’s finally a British Vogue cover star, making her debut on the February 2024 issue. Impossibly famous but forever familiar, Roberts is among the most known, but least knowable, women in the world. Richard Curtis, a dear friend of the star, heads to her London hotel to reveal the many faces of a true Hollywood legend. 

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First, I wanted to ask: Famous Face. When you look in the mirror, do you ever see “the face of Julia Roberts” rather than your own face? Do you ever think, “Oh, that is a famous face?”

No.

Next I want to talk to you about Film Face. I think one of your astonishing qualities is to be completely present in front of the camera, to reveal who you are to it. Are you aware of that when someone says, “Action”?

Well, it’s funny, because my most technical job is to forget where the camera is. It’s the camera’s responsibility to be in the right place for the scene. That’s not my job. I do think that is a thing that kind of separates actors from non-actors – being able to find the camera, but for it to have no conscious consequence. It doesn’t scare me, it doesn’t comfort me. It’s the documentarian of whatever I’m doing.

America would not have voted you their sweetheart 30 years ago if they didn’t think they were getting something special from you that they weren’t getting from other people…

I think it’s dangerous to overanalyse these things. But I will say that I think there’s something in me that’s always [let] people feel they’re comfortable, or they see something familiar. If someone sees me in a grocery store and they say, “Why did you cut your hair like that?” it’s not because they’re trying to be rude. It’s because they feel they know me, that I sit behind them in church every Sunday. It’s that sense of feeling that you understand someone that you don’t know. I guess looking relatively like myself in most parts takes me out of the character-actor lane. But I never feel like I’m playing myself.

Yeah, well, I agree with that.

And honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie [NOTTING HILL, 1999], playing a movie actress. 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.

Did we know that was a good line? The “I’m just a girl” line? Or do you remember thinking, “Oh, this is another line.”

I mean, it was a great scene. But who knew that that would become the line. The best thing, besides our friendship, to come out of NOTTING HILL is [director] Barry Jenkins watching it over someone’s shoulder…

[Photo Credit: Lachlan Bailey for British Vogue Magazine]

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