Julia Roberts (Actor)

"I don't think I'll ever really understand the fascination with [my private life]. And I comprehend less the idea that when there is nothing to report, something has to be manufactured." - Roberts to USA Today, June 20, 1997

"I work when I want to work, and I work with people that I want to work with. I travel hither and yon to fabulous places. I'm surrounded by wonderful, interesting people. I live a privileged life, HUGELY privileged. It's an EXCELLENT life. I'm rich. I'm happy. I have a great job. It would be absurd to pretend that it's anything different. I'm like a pig in shit." - Roberts quoted in Vanity Fair, June 1999

"I'll tell you something, not long after 'Pretty Woman' came out, suddenly everyone who ever passed through Smyrna's city limits went to high school with me and was my best friend. I was suddenly reading accounts of my would-be life, based on people I had barely known in school. I find it more amusing than anything else... every day of my life is just the greatest revenge, isn't it?" - Julia Roberts to The London Times, Jan. 3, 1999

"I've never discussed this before, but as a child I used to bite my toenails off instead of clipping them. I was very limber." - Roberts to Movieline November 2002

"It's nuts that the average person probably knows more about me than they do about their friends and families." - Roberts quoted in Chicago Sun-Times, May 23, 1999

"Julia's smile is like a thousand-watt bulb. Everybody falls for it, but there's nothing like it when she smiles and laughs. You can't help but be drawn into it." - Dermot Mulroney, Roberts' co-star in "My Best Friend's Wedding" quoted to People, July 7, 1997

"My agent hates it when I say this, but if someone was making a real good movie and they had a nickel they could spare to get me to do the job, I'd do it. But when someone's making a no-budget independent film, going off to Nebraska to shoot a 105-page movie in 18 days, I don't think I'm the first name that springs to their mind. And that's unfortunate, because I would think it would be a gas." - From US, August 1999

"My dream is to be a highly fulfilled and productive stay-at-home mom and wife. The highest high would be growing our food that I then make, and then composting and growing more - that kind of circle. But also to have my own creative outlet, even if it's silly needlework and stuff like that. To have that high-functioning fulfillment, and to have that radiate into my children so that I'm there with them, I'm connected with them, and I'm with Danny and we're all together, and yet my motor is revving." - Roberts to Vanity Fair, November 2007

"The first time I felt famous was when I went to the movies with my mom. I had gone to the loo, and someone in the bathroom said in a very loud voice, 'Girl in stall No. 1, were you in Mystic Pizza?' I paused and said, 'Yeah, that was me.'" - Roberts to People Aug. 22, 1999

"The thing that I'm able to do now is put words to the feelings as opposed to once upon a time when, if someone approached me in a certain way, I might look at them and inside I'm thinking, please go away. Please stop looking at me. Please, please, please. I don't know how to deal with you. I don't know what to do."

"But it was a challenge that obviously I had to have in my life, and I think I was able to draw a lot of things from it. And I regret not a moment of it. Not even at its worst moment of really being apoplectic with ignorance, because my life is now so, I just live my life now. And each little steppingstone leads to the next thing, and it sounds corny, but to remove one element of it is to collapse the whole house of cards." - Roberts quoted in US, August 1999

"There's no mistaking the tough core of intelligence and wit in her work, not just a willingness to take chances but a growing delight in doing so. Here's to future gambles in the still-surprising career of Julia Roberts. Risk looks good on her." - Peter Travers writing in Us, August 1997

"What changes with fame, I think, are perceptions of an individual, more than the individual." - Julia Roberts to Stephen Schaefer in Boston Herald, May 28, 1999

"You see those pictures of Julia walking around the neighborhood with a big overcoat and maybe her pajamas, just to go buy a container of milk. That is great. She is not vain in any way." - Sante D'Orazio, famed photographer and friend of Roberts, to People, May 9, 2005

In 1993, Roberts became the highest-paid actress to date, reportedly receiving $8.5 million per film. For "Mary Reilly" in 1996, she reportedly earned $10 million while a year later, she was paid $12 million for "Conspiracy Theory." In 1999, Roberts cracked the $20 million mark, making her once again the highest-paid female actor in Hollywood.

On her rocky relationship with the press: "Everybody has a job to do, I appreciate that. But at the same time, my job is to act, not to clear things up, not to fill in the dotted lines of the ifs, ands, buts, whys and hows of my life. I have too often succumbed to the pressure of feeling that's my responsibility. I have been fleeced enough times, lied about enough times, raked over the coals, misrepresented, misunderstood and misconceived enough." - Julia Roberts quoted in Rolling Stone, July 14, 1999