Julia Roberts

Julia Fiona Roberts was born on October 28, 1967, in Atlanta. An American actress, she has built a career on leading roles across many genres, earning an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and three Golden Globes. She first became famous for playing charming, relatable characters in romantic comedies and blockbusters, then moved into dramas, thrillers, and independent films.

Her early breakthroughs came with *Mystic Pizza* (1988) and *Steel Magnolias* (1989). She then became a Hollywood leading lady through romantic comedies like *Pretty Woman* (1990), *My Best Friend's Wedding* (1997), *Notting Hill* (1999), and *Runaway Bride* (1999). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing the title role in the biographical drama *Erin Brockovich* (2000). Later films include *Ocean's Eleven* (2001), *Ocean's Twelve* (2004), *Charlie Wilson's War* (2007), *Valentine's Day* (2010), *Eat Pray Love* (2010), *August: Osage County* (2013), *Wonder* (2017), *Ticket to Paradise* (2022), *Leave the World Behind* (2023), and *After the Hunt* (2025). On television, she played a physician during the AIDS crisis in the HBO film *The Normal Heart* (2014), earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination; a social worker in the first season of the streaming series *Homecoming* (2018); and Martha Mitchell in the Starz limited series *Gaslit* (2022).

Roberts runs the production company Red Om Films, through which she has executive produced many of her own projects and the first four films of the American Girl franchise (2004–2008). She has been the global ambassador for Lancôme since 2009. For much of the 1990s and early 2000s, she was the world’s highest-paid actress. *People* magazine has named her the most beautiful woman in the world a record five times.

Roberts was born at Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta to Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Grady Roberts. Her ancestry includes English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, German, and Swedish roots. Her father was Baptist, her mother Catholic, and Roberts was raised Catholic. Her older brother Eric (born 1956), from whom she was estranged for several years until 2004, older sister Lisa (born 1965), and niece Emma are also actors. She also had a younger half-sister, Nancy Motes. Her parents, both former actors and playwrights, met while performing for the U.S. Armed Forces. They later co-founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in Midtown Atlanta and ran a children’s acting school in Decatur, Georgia, while expecting Julia. The children of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. attended the school; Walter Roberts coached their daughter, Yolanda. Because the Roberts family had financial difficulties and Walter ran the only racially integrated theater troupe in the region, Coretta King paid the hospital bill when Julia was born.

Roberts’s parents married in 1955. Her mother filed for divorce in 1971, and it was finalized in early 1972. From 1972, Roberts lived in Smyrna, Georgia, attending Fitzhugh Lee Elementary School, Griffin Middle School, and Campbell High School. In 1972, her mother married Michael Motes, who was abusive and often unemployed; Roberts despised him. They had a daughter, Nancy, who died at 37 on February 9, 2014, of an apparent drug overdose. The marriage ended in 1983, with Betty Lou divorcing Motes on cruelty grounds, later calling the marriage the biggest mistake of her life. Roberts’s father died of cancer when she was ten.

As a child, Roberts wanted to be a veterinarian and played the clarinet in her school band. After high school, she moved to New York City to pursue acting, signing with the Click Modeling Agency and enrolling in acting classes.

Her first television appearance was as a juvenile rape victim in the *Crime Story* episode “The Survivor,” broadcast on February 13, 1987. She made her big-screen debut in the dramedy *Satisfaction* (1988), alongside Liam Neeson and Justine Bateman, playing a band member looking for a summer gig. (She had filmed a small role in 1987 opposite her brother Eric in *Blood Red*, with only two lines of dialogue, but it was not released until 1989.) In 1988, she appeared in the fourth-season finale of *Miami Vice*. Her first critical success came with the independent romantic comedy *Mystic Pizza*, where she played a Portuguese-American teenage waitress. Roger Ebert called her a “major beauty with a fierce energy” and noted the film might be remembered for showcasing future stars. In *Steel Magnolias* (1989), she played a young bride with diabetes alongside Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, and Daryl Hannah. The filmmakers had considered Laura Dern and Winona Ryder, but the casting director insisted they see Roberts, then filming *Mystic Pizza*. Playwright Robert Harling said, “She walked into the room and that smile lit everything up and I said ‘that’s my sister’.” Director Herbert Ross was notoriously tough on Roberts; Sally Field admitted he “went after Julia with a vengeance.” The film was a critical and commercial success, earning Roberts her first Academy Award nomination and first Golden Globe win.