Cannes fest a first for Julia Roberts
Hollywood superstar admits she’s awestruck by festival and enjoys just being an actor
CANNES, FRANCE— Is it possible to be one of the world’s biggest movie stars and still be humble and awestruck?
Julia Roberts is making it seem that way at the Cannes Film Festival.
She’s incredibly making her first visit to Cannes, in a career stretching nearly 30 years that includes four Oscar nominations and a Best Actress win, for Erin Brockovich.
At the press conference Thursday for Money Monster, the out-of-competition Jodie Foster thriller that brought her here, Roberts, 48, radiated happiness, especially since she was sitting right next to George Clooney, her co-star and longtime pal.
Also on the stage with her were other close friends, including Foster and Money Monster co-stars Jack O’Connell, Caitriona Balfe and Dominic West.
“Are you talking to me and George as one person?” she joked, when a journalist asked how she and Clooney prepared for their Money Monster roles.
“We’re kind of one person, at this point.”
Roberts is aware that security precautions at the festival are much higher this year than in the past, due to Europe-wide terror alerts.
But she has nothing to compare it to, since she hasn’t previously attended the festival.
“I do not feel unsafe in any way. I feel completely embraced and safe and happy. . . . And having never been here before, this is so crazy and wonderful and such a wild celebra- tion of cinema,” she said.
“It’s such a thrill for me to be here with Jack, who is the only person who might be slightly less scared than me. But we’re on par — he conceals it better.
“And just to be up here with one of my dearest friends (Clooney) right next to me, and my friend Dominic, who played my boyfriend in Mona Lisa Smile. And Caitriona, who I just adore, and Jodie, who I just want to follow everywhere.
“These are dreams coming true. So there’s nothing about this scenario that feels any less than wonderful in every way.”
Roberts also showed uncommon humility in stating she has no desire ever to direct her own movie, unlike most other actors.
“I consider it hugely complimentary that people ask me if I want to be a director, but I do not. Because I know my intellectual limitations, and I know the limitations of my patience. And I can’t have more than four people an hour ask me a question.
“It’s something like playing the cello or painting that I envy and hope in another lifetime I might be drawn to. But I think in this life I just want to admire it from a small distance and be glad when my capabilities come into the orbit of a director that I just live to serve and impress.”