Julia Roberts was the queen of rom-coms in the 90s, but she says there’s one she’d pass on if she were asked to make it now.
Roberts spoke with Deadline recently about her career and revealed why she wouldn’t want to make “Pretty Woman” if given the chance today.
“Oh, it’s impossible. I have too many years of the weight of the world inside of me now that I wouldn’t be able to kind of levitate in a movie like that, right?,” she said.
Roberts continued, “I mean, not weight of the world, like, negative, but just all the things that we learn, all the things we put in our pockets along the lane. It would be impossible to play someone who was really innocent, in a way.
“I mean, it’s a funny thing to say about a hooker, but I do think that there was an innocence to her, kind of… I guess it’s just being young.”
The Oscar-winner also addressed the changing opinions on “Pretty Woman” over the years, with some finding the story of a sex worker being hired to be in a relationship with a wealthy man (Richard Gere) being less romantic than when the film debuted.
“Well, I think anytime you have a huge passage of time and cultural shifts…Think about all the movies and plays of the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s – you would look at them now and just be like, ‘How are people saying these things, doing these things?'”
She added, “I think these are the choices that we make as artists, as art appreciators and people that love to read books and go to the theatre and yeah, times change, people change, ideas change.”
Roberts also reflected on another one of her classic rom-coms, the 1999 film “Notting Hill,” co-starring Hugh Grant.
In the film, she plays a Hollywood star who falls for Grant’s humble London book shop owner, a premise she admits she thought was “stupid” when she was first approached for the role.
“Gosh, I just remember when my agent called me about ‘Notting Hill’ and I thought, ‘Well that sounds like the dumbest idea of any movie I could ever do. I’m going to play the world’s biggest movie star and I do what? And then what happens? This sounds so f****** stupid.'”
“And then I read the script, and I was like, ‘Oh. This is so charming. It’s so funny”And then I went to lunch with Richard [Curtis] and [producer] Duncan [Kenworthy] and beloved Roger Michell, may he rest in peace.”
Roberts was still thinking of turning down the part during the lunch meeting, recalling, “[I was going to tell them], ‘No, this isn’t going to work. I’m passing on this movie.’
“And they were just so charming and sweet and funny. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is really going to happen.’ And we had a beautiful time doing it. It was cast to perfection [by Mary Selway], all the friends, everybody. It was so great. And we had a beautiful time. And I think Roger, he just created the film in a way that it just, at every turn, it succeeded.”
