Julia Roberts has been in more than 50 movies during her career in Hollywood – here's why she hasn't been nude in any of them. Photo / Getty Images
Julia Roberts has been in more than 50 movies during her career in Hollywood – here's why she hasn't been nude in any of them. Photo / Getty Images
Julia Roberts has revealed why she’s never been nude in movies, confessing she’s chosen to have a rather “G-rated career”.
The 56-year-old actress, whose career-defining role was as a prostitute in Pretty Woman, said keeping her clothes on while on camera has been a conscious “choice” – but stressed she didn’t want to criticise other actors who have bared all on screen.
Speaking to British Vogue for the magazine’s February issue, she said: “You know, not to be criticising others’ choices, but for me to not take off my clothes in a movie or be vulnerable in physical ways is a choice that I guess I make for myself.
“But in effect, I’m choosing not to do something as opposed to choosing to do something.”
Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (1990).
Opening up about how her choice may be linked to the fact she shares DNA with 89-year-old feminist trailblazer Gloria Steinem, Roberts added: “Not long ago, I did my whole family tree with the brilliant Dr Henry Gates. If you’ve seen his show, Finding Your Roots, it’s brilliant and I’m obsessed with it.
“One of the things he does at the very, very end is he tells you who they have discovered you are DNA cousins with. I won’t even say, ‘Can you guess who I’m DNA cousins with?’ because there’s no telling what horrible person you would choose just to embarrass me in this interview, but I am DNA cousins with Gloria Steinem.
“Yes. And I just want everybody to know that.”
Julia Roberts' latest role is Netflix's new thriller, Leave the World Behind.
Roberts, who has three children with her 54-year-old cinematographer husband of 21 years Daniel Moder, also said she thinks it’s far more difficult to be famous than when she rose to stardom.
She said: “It’s completely different from my time. I mean, that’s when I really feel like a dinosaur, when you just look at the structure of the business. It’s completely different … and in a way, it seems so cluttered.
“There are so many elements to being famous now, it just seems exhausting.
“Whereas I feel like, and again this is just my perception, because I don’t really know – I’m not a young person starting out in show business in the 21st century – but it seems to me that it was: You meet people, you read for parts, you try to get jobs, you get a job, you try to do a good job, and from that job, you might meet some new people who might suggest you to some other people and then you might get another job and you might get paid a little bit more for that job, and it might be a little bit of a better job.
“It kind of just made this sort of structural sense, and now it just seems more chaotic,” adding, “There’s more elements, there’s more noise, there’s more outlets, there’s more stuff.”
