Early Julia
Huge lips, huge hit. Credit card Cinderella in Pretty Woman. Married Lyle Lovett, engaged to everyone else.
Mid-period Julia
Bad choices in increasingly desperate multiplex fodder: hotshot law student (The Pelican Brief), hotshot reporter (I Love Trouble), twinkly Tinkerbell (Hook), dowdy maid (Mary Reilly).
Late Julia
Back in box-office rom-com heaven with My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, reprising Early Julia (insecure girl with dazzling smile) and making overt fun of Middle Julia (fame, tabloid hell and a jittery relationship with altars and commitment). Bums-on-seats quotient rarely matched by critical praise though, until …
New millennium Julia
Erin Brockovich, in which box-office rule (number one US film with $55,9m in the first 10 days) combines with critical drool. David Thomson says: “We look at Julia and marvel and sigh and are grateful to be there in her dark whether we think she’s terrific, lovely and desirable – or so shrewd it ought not to be allowed.” “Roberts has kissed a lot of frogs on the way to this satisfying triumph,” says the LA Times. America’s sweetheart is back, it seems, with a frankly Hello Boys-style uplift and similarly inflated bank balance: from $300 000 (Pretty Woman, 1990) to $20m (Erin Brockovich, 2000).
Post-millennium Julia
Next up is the action comedy The Mexican with Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini, directed by Gore Verbinski, whose last film was Mouse Hunt.