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Hello, Again
LOS ANGELES — In the last eight years, Julia Roberts has become a mother, dabbled on Broadway (in “Three Days of Rain”) and provided the voice for both a spider (in “Charlotte’s Web”) and an ant (in “The Ant Bully”).
Next
month, she turns up in what has become a surprisingly unfamiliar role
for an actress who was the biggest female box office star in Hollywood
for a decade: leading lady.
While
many in the movie world have their heads turned toward the Academy
Awards, Universal Pictures has been laying groundwork for its March 20
release of “Duplicity.” The film is a romantic romp about a couple of corporate security types working a con on the corporations and on each other.
Written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who made “Michael Clayton,” one of last year’s best-picture nominees, it pairs Clive Owen with Ms. Roberts in her first real leading role since 2001. That year,
Ms. Roberts capped a long string of roles in romantic comedy with
performances in “America’s Sweethearts” and “The Mexican.”
That
she is finally back has created a hopeful flutter among producers and
filmmakers who have been yearning for some unbridled female star power.
That’s been in relatively short supply since Ms. Roberts, who turned 41
in October, began to focus on raising her family and took a handful of
strong roles in ensemble films like “Mona Lisa Smile,” “Closer” and “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Ocean’s Twelve.” She had a prominent role in the 2007 film “Charlie Wilson’s War” but shared the screen with Tom Hanks, Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
“Nobody
has stepped into the vacuum,” said one female producer, who spoke on
condition of anonymity to protect her future hopes of casting the likes
of Reese Witherspoon, Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson. None of those actresses has yet approached the run of hits Ms. Roberts had in the 1990s with movies including “Erin Brockovich” (for which she won an Oscar), “Runaway Bride” and “Notting Hill.”
“Right now, people are desperate for the heir apparent to be Katherine Heigl,” the same producer said of that 30-year-old actress, who captured about half of a Roberts-size audience with her “27 Dresses,” and has another shot at the crown with “The Ugly Truth,” a romantic comedy set for release in July by Sony Pictures.
Last
week Ms. Roberts declined through her publicist, Marcy Engelman, to
discuss her decision to star in “Duplicity,” or her reasons for
stepping aside, if not quite back, at the height of her box office
appeal. A number of people close to Ms. Roberts said her marriage in
2002 to Danny Moder, who did camera work on “The Mexican,” and the
demands of raising their three children had put limits on her acting
career.
In 2007 Ms. Roberts took a small role in “Fireflies in the Garden,” a family drama independently financed for about $10 million, with a
first-time director, Dennis Lee, and Mr. Moder as director of
photography. The film has yet to be distributed in the United States,
though Marco Weber, chief executive of Senator Entertainment, said his
company expected to release it later this year.
Some
who have worked closely with Ms. Roberts said her choices were based
less on strategy than on instinct. She was persuaded to do “Duplicity,”
they said, roughly two years ago after being urged to take the role by
Mr. Owen, a friend. She was pregnant at the time, so the movie waited
for the birth of her third child, and her decision to stick with it was
helped by the fact that it could be shot in New York, where she has a
home, without disrupting her family life.
As
she tests her career’s next phase, Ms. Roberts appears to have mastered
a trick that has sometimes eluded stars of her generation, including Tom Cruise, Renée Zellweger and Nicole Kidman: that is, to leave the audience wanting a bit more.
At least, Universal and its collaborators said that they hoped that things work out that way.
“It’s
just so clearly there,” Jennifer Fox, a producer of “Duplicity,” said
of the presumed reservoir of audience goodwill for Ms. Roberts. “I
don’t know how we know it, but we do.” (Chatter on the Internet has run
the gamut, from “can’t wait” to “it’s over.”)
Donna
Langley, Universal’s production president, said the studio had cast Ms.
Roberts based on “gut instinct,” without benefit of focus groups or
surveys to measure her enduring appeal.
“Julia has a unique ability to be steely, but winsome and lovable all at the same time,” Ms. Langley said.
Mr.
Gilroy was putting final touches on the film in New York this week,
though Universal had already plugged it with an advertising spot during
the Super Bowl and had begun booking Ms. Roberts for the inevitable
promotional interviews about her return.
Once
on board, Mr. Gilroy said, Ms. Roberts brought her considerable
experience with romantic capers to bear in shaping the project.
“She was our expert,” he said. “She had been down this road before, and none of the rest of us had.”
Come opening day, at any rate, Ms. Roberts, who established her superstardom with the hooker-Cinderella story “Pretty Woman” in 1990, need not worry too much about female competition. The Valentine’s Day bets of early February, including “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” with Isla Fisher, and “He’s Just Not That Into You,” with a clutch of stars including Ms. Johansson and Jennifer Aniston, will be safely out of theway.
That
will clear the field for Ms. Roberts’s film on March 20 and a romance,
of sorts, from Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks, called “I Love You, Man.”
That movie works differently fromwith Paul Rudd and Jason Segel in the lead roles, “I Love You, Man” is about a guy who goes looking
for a friend to be his best man and ends up liking him better than his
fiancée.