Hollywood film star Julia Roberts turns 50 on October To celebrate her birthday, we're highlighting some of her work, both past and upcoming. Julia Roberts became a star at 23 with her romantic comedy Pretty Woman , about Vivian Ward, a beautiful prostitute who finds happily ever after with a wealthy businessman played by s Casanova Richard Gere. Although it's been criticized for romanticizing prostitution, the story is in effect a fairy tale, with the gorgeous yet down-to-earth Vivian swept off her feet into a world of wealth and culture.
At 32, Roberts played an American movie star who meets and enchants unsuccessful bookstore owner Hugh Grant in Notting Hill , an adorable neighborhood in London. If you love romantic comedies set in England with dry British humor and a zany group of side characters think Bridget Jones's Diary , you'll devour Notting Hill.
The next year found Roberts playing a real-life heroine in a more serious story, Erin Brockovich , about the crusading single mother who discovered that contamination of the drinking water by a public utility had caused severe community health problems in Hinkley, Calif.
The dedication and hard work of the fiery Brockovich on behalf of the victims resulted in the largest settlement ever paid in a U. As an art librarian, my favorite Roberts film is Mona Lisa Smile , which she starred in at 36, playing art history professor Katherine Ann Watson, who gets a job teaching at Wellesley, a conservative women's college in Massachusetts. The story is set in and the forward-thinking Watson strives to teach the college women that there's more to life than marriage by exposing them to the freedom of modern art.
She struggles with conservativism among the students especially stubborn and outspoken Betty Warren played by Kirsten Dunst and within the college, which objects to her unorthodox teaching methods. Ultimately her dedication to independence earns her the loyalty of the students, although it compels her to make both professional and personal sacrifices.
