Closer: Julia Roberts

JULIA ROBERTS AGE 36
MUSTWORTHINESS The biggest female movie star in the world takes an unusually serious turn in December's ''Closer,'' Mike Nichols' adaptation of the Broadway play about four London residents (Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Natalie Portman) tangled in a web of sex, love, and lies. ''It's very reminiscent of 'Carnal Knowledge' or 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' Four people in a complicated situation where one minute this person's wrong, and the next minute, 'Oh wait! No, 'this' person's wrong!'''
CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND ''There were times when I went home and I would be there for like an hour by myself and think, God, I feel melancholic! And you realize it is the residue of just a lot of conflicting things.''
BUT JUDE LIGHTENED THE MOOD ''I felt a little bit like a bull in a china shop around him -- he's so elegant and English, and I'm like, you know, this big, loud American girl!''
ON HER MUST LIST U.K. band Turin Brakes and seeing Dave Matthews in concert.
CAREER HIGH ''Meeting Steven Soderbergh'' -- her director for ''Erin Brockovich,'' ''Ocean's Eleven,'' and ''Full Frontal.'' ''And now getting on the Mike Nichols wagon. Like a devoted puppy, I will follow that man to the ends of the earth.''
NEXT Soderbergh's ''Ocean's Twelve'' in December. And twins, of course.