[IMG:L]”At least twice a week people come up to me and say something about Pretty Woman,” said a Julia Roberts, who just two weeks away from her 40th birthday flashed a megawatt smile untouched by time since her breakthrough film made her a movie star at age 22. “I ask for something a little more current, but they cling to that. And that suits me fine.”
Perhaps because the title of her most famous role is still so apt. Looking resplendent in a curve-hugging black Diane von Furstenberg gown (just four months after giving birth to her third child) and a gorgeous platinum and diamond cuff bracelet from Cathy Waterman, Roberts was truly the belle of the ball of the American Cinematheque’s 22nd annual awards gala. She was there to collect the trophy traditionally presented to a major movie star in the prime of their career at a $500-a-plate banquet at the Beverly Hilton to raise funds to exhibit and preserve significant film works.
But there was no ivory tower treatment for the honoree: not only did she table-hop, stoop and kneel assiduously before dinner to personally greet the show biz pals who turned out to fete her (with doting hubby Danny Moder stroking her back the whole way), she mixed and mingled with the fan-minded guests as well–she even cruised through the “smoker’s patio” outside the ballroom, smiling that smile for the guests, even as pal Tom Hanks mocked them by taking enormous puffs from an imaginary cigarette.
And when, amid the film clips and retrospective looks at her career over 40-plus features, her celebrity friends occasionally turned up the heat to transform the tribute into a roast, no one laughed harder than the roastee herself, whose famously loud cackle could be heard throughout the ballroom as if Richard Gere had just snapped the lid of a pricey jewelry box shut near her fingers.
[IMG:L]Leading Men Laughs
Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson shared the central table with Roberts and Moder, as well as director Mike Nichols (the actors appear in Nichols’ upcoming film Charlie Wilson’s War), and he was the first to take the stage at “Julia’s bat mitzvah” to describe what it was like to be one of Julia’s leading men, which he boiled down into a useful acronym. “Q-U-A-K-E: Five letters that may help you survive working with Julia Roberts.”
“Q” stands for Questions, the actor explained. “The very first question we are asked by the press, by our in-laws, by candidates for President of the United States is always, ‘Hey, what’s it like working with Julia Roberts?'” said Hanks. “Each of us has our own boilerplate answer at the ready. Mine is ‘Julia? Why, Julia‘s the gold standard!”
“U,” Hanks continued, is for Upstaging. “If you share the screen with Julia Roberts, you might as well be a waffle iron sitting in a tree because you are being upstaged. No one is even looking at you.”
“A” referred to Asterisk, said Hanks, “the little thing that will forever follow your name after your movie with Julia Roberts is released. Your P.R. bio, your IMDB entry, your epitaph will be followed by an asterisk with the words ‘appeared with Julia Roberts in the film blank.’ Even George Clooney, who might be up for a Nobel Peace Prize some day. Mark my words he will forever be known as George Clooney—asterisk: ‘appeared with Julia Roberts in the film Ocean’s 11,” he paused, “and also won the Nobel Peace Prize.’”
“K” is for ‘Knowledge.’ “Knowledge all the above things are true, they have occurred, and you can’t do a damn thing about it. Knowledge that no matter how good shape you are in, or how good a haircut you are sporting, Julia Roberts is at the end of the day going home to a husband who is way better looking than you will ever be.”
Finally, Hanks concluded, “E” is for Everybody, as in “Everybody loves Julia Roberts. Absolutely everybody. Everybody, everybody, everybody. Everybody loves Julia Roberts.”
Bruce Willis popped in to talk about his co-star from The Player’s dedication to her craft. “Julia also really enjoys researching her roles prior to filming them,” Willis enthused. “For Mona Lisa Smile she attended history classes at NYU for a whole semester. For Erin Brockovich, she worked in a law firm for five weeks. And for her star-making role in Pretty Woman, Julia hung out on Hollywood Boulevard for a few months. That’s actually how we met. I was doing some research myself.”
Roberts‘ Ocean’s 11 paramour Clooney sent in a video from New York, which he filmed in a bathroom stall. “The fans outside are crazed. I’m hiding in the bathroom right now just so I can talk to you,” said Clooney. “But I wanted to say congratulations. It’s a huge night for you and I’m so proud and I really wish I could be there with you.” A man’s foot inched under the wall to Clooney’s stall, and George opened the adjoining stall’s door, revealing Brad Pitt, Roberts’ co-star from Ocean’s and The Mexican, inside. Brad, looking like a deer in the headlights (or is that a senator?), simply offered “I have a wide stance.”
Roberts’ Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride co-star Gere also appeared via videotape to praise his most famous on-screen paramour, saying that when they met she was “a beautiful, intense, smart, sexy kind of perfect girl and seems to have grown into this incredible woman. I’m really, really touched that I’ve known you this long”
[IMG:L]Behind the Scenes Stories
Garry Marshall, who helmed Gere and Roberts’ collaborations (and “just means the world to me,” she said) recalled that early on in their partnership “I taught her a very important thing. We got together, and we did a movie together called 3,000.” There was a palpable silence as the dinner guests wracked their brains trying to recall the film, playing into Marshall’s tale.
“I got jackets–beautiful jackets that said 3,000 on it,” the director continued in his distinctive Brooklyn-tinged lilt. “And we all got them, and we wore them, and we were feeling great. And then the studio said ‘We’re changing the title of the picture’…They said ‘Why don’t we change it to The Lady is a Tramp.’ I said ‘You don’t want to go more on the nose for this film?’ So they said, ‘Or it could be Pretty Woman. Now there’s a title that we could use that sounds nice, because it’s a song.’ See, the titles were picked on which song the studio owned.”
Knowing laughter began to roll from the industry savvy crowd. “So she learned from me that before you make the jacket, you’ve got to know the name of the picture,” Marshall concluded. “And somewhere 10 years from now, she’ll pull out a jacket that says 3,000 and say ‘Danny, when did I do this film?’ And we’ll remember it was Pretty Woman.’”
Nichols, another of Roberts’ renowned directors, talked about what it was like to work on set with the world’s most famous actress. “Directing Julia is somewhere between falling in love, driving a Ferrari, reading a Yeats poem, and having a triple-decker ice cream cone,” he said. “She is so beautiful and so alive on screen that you might forget the name of what she does up there. It’s called acting, and she’s very, very good at it.”
Natalie Portman, who looked like the sweetest princess in this or any other glaxay in her satin eggplant Lanvin gown, surprised the crowd with a distinctly salty recollection: “When I had the honor of working with Julia in Closer, in which we would both be saying a million dirty words, I wanted to give Julia the perfect gift on the first day of work. Being the baby I am, I brought Julia a necklace that said simply, elegantly, ‘Cunt.’”
The black-tie crowd erupted into fits of hysterical laughter, Julia’s guffaw louder then ever. “This was the ideal gift because Julia is so clearly the opposite,” the giggling Portman continued. “And as a wrap gift I was incredibly honored when Julia gave me a beautiful necklace with the words ‘L’il Cunt.’ This is forever and ever my official wrap name.”
Sally Field shared a favorite memory from Steel Magnolias. “Once during rehearsal, it was a time when our not-so-very-nice director asked her to perform one of the very most dramatic scenes in the film as if it were a rap song,” Field recalled. “Julia, without hesitation, stepped up in not a timid way, rapped and rhymed the entire scene with a very elaborate dance that went along with it. It was absolutely brilliant, totally hysterical–and of course, not right for the movie.”
Marcia Gay Harden had a field day playing up a comedy bit suggesting some intense jealousy of her seemingly perfect co-star on the set of their film Mona Lisa Smile. “September 18: J.R. so skinny and beautiful. I hope she’s dumb,” Harden mock-read from her “diary.” “Saw her eating one piece of Romaine lettuce at lunch with a knife and fork. Thank God she added some olive oil and salt. I hope she bloats.’”
[IMG:L]Shirley You Jest
But no one mixed comedy and sentiment better than Shirley MacLaine, who departed completely from the lines on the teleprompter to speak from the heart to Roberts, recalling the promise and grace under pressure she’d seen in the young actress during not-so-ideal working conditions on Steel Magnolias.
“I knew then she would be in for the long run,” said MacLaine. “It was sort of happening to you the same time in my life that it happened to me. And I was watching and thinking, we talked about our lives, we talked about being from the South, we talked about our famous brothers, we talked about what happens when you feel insecure and everyone thinks you’re talented.”
The veteran actress also recalled watching Roberts in action off-screen at a local tavern during production. “You got up on the stage and you started singing, and the spotlight got brighter and you started to sing your heart out. I knew then you would either be on this stage or you would marry some singer who was on the stage. That explained a relationship some years later,” MacLaine said, in a sly allusion to Roberts’ brief marriage to singer Lyle Lovett. “It seemed quirky to most people, but to me, I understand it.”
“I watched as you grew into yourself and I saw you, well, fall in love with lots of people and lots of people falling in love with you,” MacLaine continued. “Mostly what I love is your search for yourself, your search for who you are as an actor–but also, you can’t do it if you don’t know who you are. And an unexamined life as we know is not worth living and the most important journey you’ll ever take is through yourself. You’ve had to do it in public, you’ve had to do it with brickbats, you’ve had to do it with judgment. And I admire you so much for still being with it. And I can’t wait to see the rest.”
[IMG:L]The Mother of All Acceptance Speeches
Other tributes came from Dermot Mulroney, Blair Underwood, and (via video) the ever Julia-besotted David Letterman, and no less a luminary than Denzel Washington, Roberts’ Pelican Brief co-star, appeared seemingly out of nowhere to close out the evening. “She was once asked which line of a song best described her,” said Washington, “and she said it was the line in the Bruce Springsteen song ‘Thunder Road’, where the Boss says, ‘You ain’t a beauty but hey, you’re all right.’
Then Washington spoke straight to the honoree. “Julia, beauty may fade–may fade–but ‘all right’ lasts forever. That said, I cannot be more pleased to present this semi-almost-mid-career award.”
The still-nursing mom ascended to the stage and kept to the evening’s oft-bawdy tone, clutching her ample cleavage before the crowd. “Is there a hungry baby in the house? Just come on up!” She was chuckling even harder than the audience. “How much fun is this? I mean, usually I’m asleep by now. And I just have to say–it’s hard to think when my dress is this snug!”
Then the superstar turned positively sentimental, with a thank you so touching it seemed right out of one of her signature romantic comedies. “I am beholden to all of you here, because I really am just a girl from a little town in Georgia who had this giant absurd dream and it seems like a world of people made it all come true for me and I am so indebted.”
“More than anything I am just the most proud wife and mother of the three most amazing children, and that is all I could ever ask for,” she continued. “And the widening of my life–and my hips–is really just the true gift of my husband Danny, who I’d just be so lonely without.”
Then that mischievous glint sparkled in those big brown eyes. “Thank you all for coming,” she said, “and everybody have a drink!”
The American Cinematheque Award to Julia Roberts airs on AMC Dec. 5.
