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Cooler Than You Think: Here's What We Know about Julia Roberts

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3. Julia Roberts knows exactly how seriously to take her work. There's a moment in The Pelican Brief that is as pure a distillation of what Roberts does well as anything she's ever done. She and Sam Shepard are walking down the street after dinner, laughing, dancing, a little drunk. Shepard gets into his car, which explodes. And Roberts holds the screen as tipsiness, incomprehension, understanding, and grief war across her features. It's the kind of acting critics like to call naked, spontaneous, natural. In fact, she worked her butt off for it. "I spent more time thinking about that scene than anything else. I minorly obsessed, because it had the potential to be this great moment. And yet, it's this extraordinary challenge of, how do you relay X number of emotions in X time? Those were an exhausting few nights."

"She goes into some dark part of herself," says Brief director Alan J. Pakula. "After the first take — which was excellent, very full emotionally — I went over to her. It was like holding a fluttering bird. She could hardly talk. Her eyes were full of tears. 'Is there anything else you want?' she said. I hesitated, and she looked in my eyes and said, 'You want less.' I said, 'Yeah.' We did it again, and she contained it. It amazes me when actors do that, because in one place they're in an uncontrolled emotional state and in another they're thinking about it as a part."

Roberts tells of coming home after 16-hour days on The Pelican Brief set, peeling off her clothes, and getting into bed, not knowing how she was going to get up. Then she shrugs her own account off.

"One day, we were doing a very intense scene and I thought, 'I can't do this again.' Up to the last minute, I was in denial that I was going to have to do this, and I said to Denzel, 'What am I going to do?' And he said, 'Act.' Well. It really put it in a whole different perspective. I'm just going to have to act."

"It's perversely thrilling," she says. "I know it sounds like I'm shaving years off my life, but there's a great element of madness when somebody says, 'Action' and you have to do it. I remember getting up at seven for school and thinking, 'This is way too early for me.' But man, when that clock goes off, if it's four, if it's five, you get up. There's no 'My stomach hurts.' Nobody gives a s---, you know? I sort of thrive on that idea of 'have to.' It has to be done."

4. Julia Roberts loves to dance. "I'm in a very non-newsworthy place in my life," she says, "though you couldn't tell by the papers." This is her crabby but patient way of acknowledging that, yes, she has indeed perused the New York Post, which has spilled much ink recently declaring that Roberts' marriage to Lyle Lovett is over and implying the cause by running shots of her dancing with grunge-hunk Ethan Hawke at a New York restaurant. ("Lovett or Leave It," barked a headline.) Here are the two things Roberts has to say on that subject:

(1) "Harvey Weinstein was there." (In a tone that implies that if one is going to be coarse enough to accuse her of having a liaison, then at the very least one shouldn't be so stupid as to suggest she would do so in front of the head of Miramax Films.)

(2) "The facts are simple. I actually, for the first time in a long time, went out to dinner. Just me and some people I've worked with. Talked about some writers, everything is going gangbusters. The band strikes up — 'Hey, you want to dance?' We all had a good time. So, since when is that bad?"

"I love to dance," she continues on a more energized note. "And I will continue to dance. In fact, I will just say right here and now that up until the time I go to work — and maybe after I'm already at work — I plan on doing as much dancing with as many people as possible. I will dance until I drop. How about that?"

Nonetheless, Roberts' marital status remains interesting for the same reasons it was interesting the day the world learned she had, quite suddenly, wed: People didn't get it then, they don't get it now, and the couple's what's-to-get? taciturnity on the issue, not to mention the separate-cities, separate-careers situation that has limited their time together, has only increased perplexity.

So you make an effort: "How's married life?"

"Great," she says. "It's just fine."

Agonizingly long pause, during which she leans forward, her eyes darkening a little. "Here's the thing," she says. "Reading the New York Post doesn't really, I think, even have to lead to the question 'How's married life?' Does it?"

"Okay, so it's a separate question. Since getting married was probably the biggest change in your life in the last couple of years, and your time together is... uh..."

"Quality, not quantity!" she says happily. "Good one! I just came up with that! You know, our situation is unique and unconventional. And intensely personal. And I think worthy of a lot more respect than it gets." In other words, if she wanted you to know, she'd tell you. Dance over.

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