Julia Roberts Is Calling Bullshit On Your Favourite Rom Coms

Julia Roberts is, without a doubt, the Queen of rom coms. Her filmography, that includes gems such as Pretty Woman, Notting Hill and My Best Friend’s Wedding, has grossed over $2.8 billion, with Pretty Woman alone bringing in $464 million worldwide. As the highest-paid actress in the world throughout most of the 1990’s and early noughties, her performances in the aforementioned award-winning film alongside Eat Pray Love, Valentine’s Day, Runaway Bride (and many, many more) have made her one of the most successful actors of all time.

Yet, in 2018, she abdicated her thrones stating that she simply had too much life experience to realistically portray a typical rom-com heroine. ‘I love to be in them, I love to watch them. But sometimes they just don’t work at a certain point of life experience,’ she told Entertainment Tonight, ‘It’s not even about age; it’s just about what people know, that you know.’ Essentially, audiences would too easily poke holes in her characters naivety – a trait so often typical of rom com heroines – were she to play the lead role.

And now, its Roberts herself poking holes in our favourite rom coms, breaking our hearts that little bit more. In an interview with The Guardian, she dived into the criticism surrounding Pretty Woman, which has been called out over time for its unrealistic depiction of sex work and problematic power dynamics.

‘I don’t really think you could make that movie now, right?’ she said, ‘So many things you could poke a hole in, but I don’t think it takes away from people being able to enjoy it.

‘It really is not a measure of talent, particularly in the beginning,’ she continued. ‘It’s a measure of good fortune – and being able to have your wits about you enough to make something out of that good fortune.’

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Going on to discuss fellow timeless classic Notting Hill, she also revealed that she never actually wanted to be a part of the film. ‘I did not want to do that movie,’ she said, ‘The pitch of it sounds awful, right? Do you want to come and play the world’s biggest movie star and then fall in love with the bookshop owner? No!’

Lucky for us, and her as it turns out, she was convinced to do the film after meeting the film-makers, since describing it as a ‘little jewel of a movie’.

Essentially, Roberts is aware as all of us how many plot holes you can easily poke in films and how some of the characters and relationships are in desperate need of greater inspection and nuance. What she does prove though, is that you can call bullshit on them and still watch again and again...