Sunday, May 11, 2008
Forget about the doe eyes and the megawatt smile -- Julia Roberts' real knack is for suffering. And that, in Hollywood, is priceless.
May 29, 1999 | The expression is iconic. The vulnerable mouth tightens warily, the round, doe-like eyes glimmer with anticipated tears. Julia Roberts is hurting -- again. The occasion is "Notting Hill," the story of a world-famous actress, Anna Scott (Roberts), who finds love with an ordinary schlub, William Thacker (played by Hugh Grant).
That the movie was made with these two actors is a far more interesting story than the one the movie purports to tell. Grant's trademark aw-shucksism was looking unsalvageable after The Incident in 1995 (Grant was arrested for soliciting the services of a prostitute), and Roberts wasn't doing much better before "My Best Friend's Wedding" came along. But the ease with which she reclaimed her mantle as America's sweetheart is remarkable. In Hollywood, where the typical shelf-life for actresses is comparable to that of deli meats, Roberts has sustained her superstar status -- despite a six-year streak of duds between "Pretty Woman" in 1990 and "Wedding" in 1997. "Flatliners" (1990) and "Sleeping With the Enemy" (1991) may have survived at the box office, but they were quickly forgotten. "The Pelican Brief" (1993) and "Ready to Wear" (1994) met with a similar fate. Then there's the staggering list of outright flops that would have extinguished any other Hollywood career: "Dying Young," "Hook," "I Love Trouble," "Something to Talk About," "Mary Reilly," "Michael Collins."
Yet, somehow, Roberts is still the talismanic megastar she was in 1992, when Robert Altman and Michael Tolkin satirized her status in "The Player." Remember? Her unbeatable bankability was the movie's running joke; her name was uttered like an incantation (usually in the company of that other magic phrase, "Pretty Woman"). Finally, in the climatic moment of the movie-within-the-movie, the Pretty Woman appeared -- but not to flash that gleaming smile she's so famous for. Instead, she played a death-row inmate who was rescued at the last minute from a gruesome, wrongful execution. It was a vignette that proved oddly prescient in its summation of Roberts' clout. For all the talk of her lovely smile, her real knack is for suffering -- and that, apparently, is priceless.
A quick review of her oeuvre confirms Roberts as the queen of misery. This actress who can be so infectiously effervescent, who clowns and laughs more adorably than any other person on earth, spends nearly all her time playing characters who are frightened, abandoned, rejected or just generally melancholy. She was afraid for her life in "Sleeping With the Enemy," "Pelican Brief," "Mary Reilly" and "Conspiracy Theory"; lonely in "Dying Young," "Something to Talk About" and "My Best Friend's Wedding"; exhausted in "Ready to Wear" and "Stepmom." And let's not forget 1989's "Steel Magnolias," in which she died of diabetes.
Roberts didn't have much control over her career back when "Magnolias" was made, of course. She was a new face then, the only unknown in a cast of divas. But she's since left her fellow Magnolias in the dust, along with virtually every other actress in Hollywood. One of only six actresses to make Premiere magazine's 1999 "Power 100" list, she's the highest-ranking at No. 33. But unlike some of her contemporaries (Demi Moore springs to mind), she hasn't used her Hollywood power to choose power roles, opting instead for the frightened maid in "Mary Reilly," the fragile pawn in "Conspiracy Theory" and the neurotic homewrecker in "My Best Friend's Wedding." She may have executive-produced "Stepmom," and even tinkered with the script, but she didn't dilute her role as the klutzy, disdained newcomer to Susan Sarandon's perfect matriarch.
Of course, Roberts has her real-life woes as well -- first among them the notoriously oppressive tabloid scrutiny under which she's huddled for the past nine years. No star seems less comfortable with fame than Roberts, and no star is more widely pitied for it. Magazine writers never grow tired of clucking over her fear of flashbulbs; in the June Vanity Fair, Ned Zeman marvels at how the local New York press "has detailed the minutiae of her life with a level of tediousness that borders on breathtaking," generously observing that in spite of this she displays only "fairly gentle ... gallows humor." She may have developed a degree of aplomb in recent years, but that's because she somehow managed, as People magazine wrote in January, to "conquer ... her dread of the Hollywood glare." Well, it's about time. Usually Roberts approaches a red carpet as if it leads to a dentist's chair. When photographers snap her out on the town, invariably her expression is one of weary beleaguerment.
"Notting Hill" is the perfect climax to this pageant of pain. It executes an astonishing switcheroo: celebrating its star's incomparable glamour and success, then placing her among ordinary people and managing, miraculously, to make her seem pitiable by comparison. Not pitiful: there's no question that Roberts' character enjoys her status. But that doesn't mean she doesn't suffer. In a remarkable scene, she and several of William's ordinary friends playfully argue about who among them is the worst off. The circle includes a low-paid record store clerk, a chubby stockbroker on the verge of being fired and a woman in a wheelchair -- yet somehow, when it's Anna's turn, those wet brown eyes make us sympathize. A moment later the group dissolves into laughter at her lightweight list of troubles (painful nose job, mean boyfriends), but this dismissal is more ritualistic than real. It echoes the audience's own mixed feelings about celebrity in order to neutralize them. And Thacker, naturally, is the perfect stand-in for the average audience member. Dogged by rabid paparazzi, he reproaches Anna: "My best friend is confined to a wheelchair for life!" he shouts. "I'm just asking you to have some sense of perspective!"
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