Julia Roberts was meant to be a man, at least in her new movie, Secret in Their Eyes. Her character in this noirish murder thriller was written as a man who loses his wife. That’s how it was in the original Oscar-winning Argentine drama upon which the film is based. But in the US remake, written and directed by Billy Ray (the screenwriter of Captain Phillips) and co-starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman, it is Roberts who loses a family member, this time her daughter. Those script changes, conceived by Roberts, “had a seismic effect on the movie,” Ray said, giving audiences a new emotional entry point even as the character’s personality did not otherwise change.
As Jess, Roberts, the onetime rom-com and box-office queen, appears starkly harrowed on screen, bathed in grief. “She had this brilliant idea of putting in these contact lenses that would make her eyes look kind of milky and washed out,” Ray said. To get the portrayal right, she did camera tests with her husband, Danny Moder, who signed on as the film’s cinematographer at Roberts’ suggestion. (The film opens in the UAE on November 19.)
Roberts, now 48, whose career shifted with an Oscar for Erin Brockovich in 2001, has for the past decade stepped back from stardom in favour of family life; she and Moder have three children, the 8-year-old Henry and the nearly 11-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, and live mainly in Malibu, California. “I’ve always been pretty picky,” she said of her roles. Now, “it just has more to do with a combination of picky and the school calendar and my husband’s work schedule.”
In an interview recently in nearby Santa Monica, Roberts was warm and full of compliments, with oxblood-painted nails and a perfume made by her longtime hairdresser. She was dressed in cigarette pants and a button-down shirt for a photo shoot, which still makes her self-conscious. (Posing solo, she said, “I always feel like a jackass.”) And she stepped carefully in her high heels, like a woman for whom stilettos are no longer routine.
She spoke about being, as she put it, “on the fringe-ish” end of the entertainment industry. “I don’t know the players and the temperatures of everything, what movies are doing well and not doing well,” she said. “There’s not quite enough hours in the day to keep up with all that.”
Ray told me he sent you the script because he heard you were looking to disappear into something.
It does need to be something that’s really challenging, that you can really sink your teeth into. I just felt drawn to Jess and her complications and how sunny and simple her life is. I really liked that, and the idea of just completely stripping her of that.
That means no vanity on screen.
It needs to have impact. You need to see that the candle inside of someone has been extinguished. And I had some really specific ideas [for a pivotal scene that depicts that] and almost constructed Jess from that moment into the past. [The contacts were] like having Kleenex in front of my eyes. It was so hard to see with those things on.
Is it easier or harder to have your husband behind the camera?
It’s both. In this instance, I think it made a world of difference for me. But it makes me more nervous. You think, oh God, what if he’s just like, ‘What is she doing?’ But it also makes you work that much harder, because you just want to have this kind of triumph — to go, ‘look!’
We trust each other, too. It’s not just, you know, make me look 30 in every room in the house. We want to show the truth of the character.
Are you now more drawn to characters who show resilience or strength in the face of real adversity? They weren’t the kind of parts you played at the start.
None of it is a roll of the dice. You’re drawn to things as an actor that have as much of an arc as possible. I don’t know how much resolve I had or could portray when I was 20. I think it’s a kind of a gift that comes with age, that you get more complexities to play.
Does that mean we won’t see you in any more romantic comedies?
People say, oh she’s against romantic comedies — I’m not. I love them. I’ve been fortunate enough to be in some really good ones, so the bar for me is really high. Also, it’s hard to find a true original idea of a romantic comedy for a 47-year-old person that’s going to be funny and realistic and relatable. I’m totally open to it. I would love to read a good romantic comedy.
We’ve heard a lot recently about how difficult it still is to make it in Hollywood as a woman, whether you’re behind the camera or in front. People are speaking up now about disparities in pay and opportunity. You were the first actress to be paid $20 million [Dh73.4 million] for a movie, for Erin Brockovich, and you had to fight for it. Do you think things are changing now?
Well, I think it does this (seesawing hands), and then we kind of go, OK, we’re fair, we’re good. And then it’s like, not so much. For me it was, well, why not get paid this amount of money, equal to my peers and male counterparts? Barbra Streisand was a real pioneer in that, I look to her, or Faye Dunaway. If you’re talking about what people perceive you can accomplish, if you can open a movie, then that’s that, but if it’s just based solely on your gender, I don’t really get that. But I don’t make the rules.
Right, but you could.
I’ve done my best, sort of forging my path and standing up for myself. And whatever ripple effect might come from that, I couldn’t really say for sure. It’s so funny that this is still the topic. Any of those things that try to herald women at the same time almost perpetuate the problem because you’re saying, “All hail the women directors.” Well, they’re just directors. They’re just fabulous directors. For me, I’m a creative person, it’s about the part and not losing the part but seeing how far you could push the business side of it. But I would never have risked the creative side of it for the business side of it.
Have you worked with a lot of female directors?
A. I just worked with Jodie Foster. She’s definitely a trailblazer and a force to be reckoned with. [The movie] is called Money Monster, with George Clooney.
Can you imagine Jodie Foster on a set with me and George? One of these things is not like the other. We’re so goofy, and she’s so serious. We had a great time. George plays a television stock-market predictor guy, and I am his director, in the control booth. I’m the controller.
It’s funny, being able to talk to George, and he cannot talk back to me. To say: You’re forced to hear me, I could just blab all day long, and you can’t take that thing out of your ear. It was a different experience for us. Yeah (flashing her famous grin), it’s good.
