'America's' Most Wanted

Image credit: America's Sweethearts: Andrew MacPherson

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America's Sweethearts

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Part of Roth's new job required simultaneously dealing with an actress playing a world renowned film star and a world renowned film star playing an average Josephine. The scene being filmed this particular day is the climactic shouting match that takes place in the hotel's convention room, as Gwen, Kiki, and Eddie finally declare their pent-up affections and antipathies before 300 assembled junketeers. Roberts and Zeta-Jones run fresh variations in each take, playing it broad, reining it in, continuing the collegial bitchiness even when the cameras aren't rolling.

''Oh, just back it up, Zeta,'' Roberts mock snarls when her costar fluffs a line. A little later, after Roth asks for yet another take, Zeta-Jones sighs, ''Call me old fashioned, but I was acting there. But I'll do it again.'' Cusack is off in a corner; he's made up to look tired and he looks tired on top of that. Azaria wanders through, testing out his fake Castilian accent (''I am extreme-a-lee well chung…''). It's all very professional and friendly and nice -- though perhaps inevitably there's always an onlooker ready to take a shot at a star.

''Catherine is great,'' says one female extra during a break in filming. ''Every morning, she comes in and says hi to everybody. I won't say anything about anybody else.'' Actually, Roberts seems adored by members of the crew, from Roth down to the grips, for her ability to be one of the guys. She leads an ad hoc on set raffle (put in five bucks, and if Roberts picks your name out of the fishbowl, you win the pot), cracks jokes with the cameramen, and has plowed like a trouper through scenes like the one, earlier in the shoot, in which the depressed former fatty has a relapse at the hotel coffee shop and orders virtually everything on the menu. ''Julia had to sit there for take after take and eat like it was her first meal in a year,'' recalls Tolan. ''She had to just shovel food down. The last time I saw her she was cross eyed.''

See EW's July 20, 2001, issue to read this article in its entirety.