Larry: By the age of 22 this powerful Hollywood woman, who prefers to be called an "actor" not an "actress, was twice nominated for an Academy Award, seemed to have it all but life on screen may have been easier than her private world, now however happily married, and making back-to-back movies. She seems cemented at the pinnacle. Julia Roberts now stars in an action/comedy romance, styled from the classics of the thirties and the forties. She plays a smart, sassy cub reporter in I Love Trouble, from Touchtone Pictures, a division of Disney, what else, they own everything. In theaters nation-wide now her cohort in the battle of the sexes is Nick Nolte, with whom we'll talk later on. The movie is both classic and contemporary, like its star Julia Roberts.

You look pretty good Julia. Thanks for joining us; don't be shy. Don't pull the shy thing on me we all know you're not shy. Why did you pick this role and what is your role in role selecting, how do you choose what you do?

Julia: I am very shy, very shy right now. I read a script and it's pretty much just an immediate reaction to reading it that I know whether or not that it's something that I want to do.

Larry: It's all gut?

Julia: Yeah, for the most part I'd say.

Larry: If you like it do you also think commercial, do you also say this will be a hit?

Julia: No, how can you know that? If people could figure that out, guess what, there'd be no bombs.

Larry: That's true, but does that enter into your thinking? Do you say this could be a great commercial success or this is wonderful but it's not going to be a commercial success.

Julia: No. I either like it or I don't. I want to do it or I don't. And that's based on how the character appeals to me and how the character translates into the story, or I just feel it.

Larry: Are there a lot of I wanna dos that never come out?

Julia: What do you mean?

Larry: Scripts you get, oh yes I love this and then something in the transmission doesn't work.

Julia: From time to time.

Larry: Basically , if you're offered a script and you like it you do it.

Julia: Yeah. I want to make one thing clear. No, just because you mention at the beginning that I prefer to be called an actor than an actress ...

Larry: Someone told me that.

Julia: No, it's true, but it sounds almost sort of like anti-my gender or something, but if I were a poet you'd call me a poet not a poetess. So, it's sort of like, we're all actors.

Larry: When is it -- actor is correct, you are all actors, role players on a stage, you're all poets, you're all authors, you write a book, so that's what you mean, you're not anti-feminist. It was on your mind right? Through the whole first two questions you were thinking, I've got to get this straight.

Julia: No, I just thought it when I heard it and I just said it.

Larry: Okay. Starting so young, was that, as you reflect back, being in a hit early, good?

Julia: Well, I'm sure I prefer it to being a failure.

Larry: I know, but sometimes they say too much, too soon can cause problems in any artistic business.

Julia: Well, I think everything for its purpose, I don't think we're ever given anything that we can't deal with, that we're not sort of meant to understand and act accordingly to what we need to do. I mean, I've always felt a very even sense of perspective for what and why I do what I do so I think that lends itself to a balance when things around you sort of become heady and overwhelming, that I just sort of stand still in the center and maintain myself.

Larry: Where did you grow up?

Julia: Georgia.

Larry: Was Eric first in the business before you?

Julia: My parents.

Larry: What did they do?

Julia: They ran a theater school when I was a child.

Larry: So you were on stage all the time or around it.

Julia: Well, I was in the dirt off the stage, playing in my diapers. Eric and Lisa actually, my other sister who is also an actor, they did a lot of plays.

Larry: Did you open curtain setups, did a little help.

Julia: Just sat. I was a loiterer, I was the youngest, I was just a kid you know so I would just sort of sit and watch everybody, but I head great pictures of all of them sort of doing this stuff.

Larry: Where along the line did Julia Roberts say, this is what I want to do, this is what want, spend my life playing other people?

Julia: I think all along the way I sensed it but not really having to say anything about it cause I was in school and it was not what I was doing or whatever. I was very reluctant to sort of admit it out loud I think cause it seemed like just following a sort of Roberts line, my parents, Eric and Lisa then me, like that.

Larry: It was no news, Julia's going to be in movies.

Julia: Yeah, I sort of felt a little bit reluctant to do it and didn't really sort of really profess it wholeheartedly until I got my first job.

Larry: Which was?

Julia: Which was a guest part on an episode of Crime Story.

Larry: The television series.

Julia: Um hum.

Larry: You were how old then?

Julia: Seven, Eighteen.

Larry: Did you like it right away?

Julia: Yeah.

Larry: Why? Talk about I Love Trouble.

Julia: Great Fun, the movie,

Larry: No, I want to talk about this -- what is the kick of it?

Julia: Everything. Everything about it, even the bad things I sort of like, like having to get up at the crack of dawn is not my favorite thing to do, but there's something sort of strangely great about, that you just have to. That you know I wake up at 4:30 or whatever, and I'm exhausted and the last thing I want to do is get up, but I have to and there's something sort of great about that, I guess I'm weird.

Larry: Is there something sort of great too about all the time in between cuts, let's wait, back in an hour...

Julia: Yeah. You know you do things, either I have to work to prepare for that's coming up or you know I sort of make lots of things, I've made curtains, I'm knitting a sweater right now, you sort of sit around...

Larry: You know some actors think about scenes, think about the role or become totally in the character they are and they have a tough time doing other things, you don't.

Julia: Well, it depends on what we're doing. You know, there are times when I can go back to my trailer and sort of just sew, do whatever I want, and there's times that I go back and like I said, work on what's coming up or what's following.

Larry: Is part of the kick the fact that, as Anthony Quinn once told me, it is for a lifetime, childlike to be an actor.

Julia: Yeah.

Larry: You're rolling down a hill as cowboys and Indians ...

Julia: Yeah, it's a bunch of adult people running around pretending to be somebody else, I guess that's pretty childish. You know, but it's sort of to me like being in a circus. Sort of, travel around, you try to do things that are interesting and entertaining, and you know, I particularly like shooting at night because ...

Larry: Why?

Julia: Well, because it's so sneaky and everybody's sleeping and you know, all these sort of adult people running around doing all this crazy stuff and it's so silly ...

Larry: Like on the street.

Julia: Yeah.

Larry: Like with a great blow-up scene in Pelican Brief.

Julia: Yeah, we worked like ten days of nights I think and it was so much fun -- well, I don't mean fun, it wasn't fun, you know, all that stuff, but just the whole idea of it lends itself to sort of, it has great dramatic appeal.

Larry: This is sort of in the Hepburn Tracy tradition?

Julia: Well, I think what we attempted to do is reminiscent of the style of those movies of that time in that we tried to have grace, energy and rhythm and a great sense of this equality of this sort of toe to toe, these two people going at it matching each other at every point and being very competitive and so I think we tried to achieve a certain sense of that, that is very reminiscent of ...

Larry: Comedy romance right?

Julia: Comedy, romance, action, adventure, drama, suspense ...

Larry: But not sexual.

Julia: What do you mean?

Larry: Someone told me it's no sex in it..

Julia: What do you mean by sex?

Larry: What do I mean by sex?

Julia: Yeah. I mean there's sex and then there's ....

Larry: I tell you what, we'll give a pause now, throw another long on the air conditioner and be right back.

Larry: We're with Julia Roberts, later with Nick Nolte. Was Nick cast before you, you before him ...

Julia: Me before him.

Larry: Did you have any say in who would be the co-star?

Julia: I did. I said we'd take Nick.

Larry: I mean, how does that work? Do they say to you here's a list of people we're considering, or they were up to Nick right away weren't they?

Julia: Yeah, we went to Nick and he was, you know we all sort of met together and stuff and he sort of sat there and seemed very Peter Bracket like and we said hey, what the heck, let's go with

Larry: That's the name of his character? Okay. Working with him, you work very differently, he's sort of one who engrosses himself, he goes into six weeks of study, like you work more off the top right? Is that difficult, easy, different?

Julia: No, in fact, the fact that we do come from completely different

Larry: Schools

Julia: So to speak. He and also I had very little time between Pelican Brief and I Love Trouble, and working with Denzel was so perfect, I mean it just really could not have been better, so you know off I go racing to Chicago to encounter this stranger Nick Nolte, and he um, we really merged on the same mind of, we both wanted the same kind of pace out of this whole thing, we both had the same ideas for the energy of the relationship and this sort of antagonistic spirit that these two people had and the competition and stuff, so we worked on that a lot and it worked out really well, you know we sort of, we both had the same ideas, how we came about them I'm sure was very different, but working on them together was quite easy.

Larry: The process is not what's important, what's important is the finished product right? What process you use or he uses is really not, so what.

Julia: Yeah, what you have to do to get on the set is your own business, you know, and what you do once you get there is everybody's business. The actor is a story teller. I mean you're involved in the telling of a story that I'm going to be caught up in and accept.

Julia: Hopefully.

Larry: The willing suspension of disbelief. Cause I know you're Julia Robert, I've got to accept that you're this woman. How important is it that the two people get along?

Julia: At work? I think it's not vital, it's not fatal if you don't. But certainly it makes working a whole lot more fun, I mean and I really like to go to work, I really like my job, I like to have a good time, I think that this is a great thing that we get to do we might as well really enjoy it while we're there.

Larry: It is a hoot isn't it. It doesn't seem a bad way to make a living.

Julia: No, it's great, it's really good, so yeah

Larry: So it's better if you do but not fatal if you don't.

Julia: Well no, cause sort of like getting up at 4:30, you have to.

Larry: You gotta do what you gotta do. I mean, if you are antagonists might it help if two people don't get along?

Julia: Well, I think that Nick and I in our friendship that we have that element to it like he'll make a joke and I'll make a comment, or I'll make a joke and he'll make a comment, it's all very, but I mean it's all in a sense of fair play and nothing is sort of mean spirited, it's all sort of very funny in the same way that they are.

Larry: Lot of slap stick in this movie? Lot of movement?

Julia: Yeah, I think it's sort of like screwball at time. I mean we cover a lot of ground in this movie as far as different ideas of what's funny.

Larry: Like what happens, I'm told there some scenes where you do your own physical scenes?

Julia: Yeah, for the most part I do

Larry: You went sliding down something?

Julia: Yeah, a catwalk. That was hanging 60 feet in the air above broken glass.

Larry: Why did you do that?

Julia: Because I'm stupid.

Larry: Did they say, "Let's have a stand-in do this?"

Julia: Well, no in fact, they didn't. That's what was so weird.

Larry: What was there motive?

Julia: That's the thing I couldn't believe - they asked me to do it. That was first and foremost my thought. I am surprised that they would even, I was sort of expecting a fight, oh let me try it and if it doesn't work out then Tabby Hansen who was my stunt double, then Tabby can do it, I thought I was going to have this conversation so I get there and I say so catwalk stunt, so yeah, basically you'll be up there and sliding down here and

Larry: Who's the director?

Julia: Chuck Shyer, but I'll tell you the only reason I'm on that catwalk was our stunt coordinator, a man named Jack Gill who is the smartest, safest, most cautious man, and uh, it was only because of his sort of painstaking explanation and showing me everything and all, like this is how you're hooked on, and this is this, you know, cause it was really high and I don't like to be that high.

Larry: So you had faith in him.

Julia: Yes.

Larry: Now, you're coming down this catwalk

Julia: Right.

Larry: Are you acting or just plain scared?

Julia: Well, it's one of those non-acting kind of days Larry, you know they say we want you to look really terrified and they say cut -- that was brilliant! I mean, I'm scared of heights, I don't want to be up there, it's really, I would have never been able to do it if I was suppose to make it look like fun.

Larry: How long did it take?

Julia: Twenty minutes.

Larry: Not a bunch of shots.

Julia: We did a bunch of different ones but for the most part, the really sort of particular scary things, we did as quickly as possible. But it's not just be suspended in mid-air sort of sliding as fast as I can down this catwalk, there's also a camera sort of mounted on a spool of string and five guys hanging off of it, and I mean the whole atmosphere was -- but then you look over and there's your director sitting in their cast chairs drinking their coffee and you know saying "oh that was great - let's try that again"

Larry: Was all exteriors in Chicago?

Julia: Yes.

Larry: We'll be back with Julia Roberts who stars with Nick Nolte in I Love Trouble that just opened and this is the big July 4th weekend and Nick will be with us later, we'll be right back.

Larry: Some people are not comfortable in comedy though. As Tony Randall said "Comedy is a serious business." Of course you can't play it funny right? The person is serious.

Julia: You know, I'm just naturally funny you see. I'm just kidding. No, but I do think that I appreciate the pace and the timing of jokes. I can't always do it but I can appreciate it and recognize it. Like to me a lot of the stuff that was funny in this movie sort of moves like a rocket, you know, and there's a definite rhythm that I was completely devoted to that I thought was really important.

Larry: Have you turned down anything you regretted?

Julia: No.

Larry: No. Took anything you regretted?

Julia: No.

Larry: Every film you've done you wanted to do and were happy with the way it turned out?

Julia: Right.

Larry: It doesn't always turn out the way it reads though right?

Julia: No.

Larry: But you're glad you did it?

Julia: Because it all, ultimately good or bad serves a greater purpose and I can recognize that purpose.

Larry: Which is/

Julia: Which is mine, which is my experience of having worked on it, the things that I learned, the things that I would like to apply to my life, the things that I learned to avoid, you know, all kinds of stuff. It's all in there, you just have to look for it.

Larry: Do you worry or think about how well a film does after you've done it?

Julia: No. No point in that.

Larry: So on Monday you're not reading the box office receipts of the weekend.

Julia: In fact, I wanted to be in town when it comes out.

Larry: We're taping this the week before, you'll be in London.

Julia: I will be.

Larry: What are you filming in London?

Julia: A movie called Mary Reilly.

Larry: Is this the Jekyll and Hyde thing?

Julia: Yeah.

Larry: She's Jekyll and Hyde, she's Dr. Hyde's...

Julia: She's Dr. Jekyll's house maid.

Larry: And who plays

Julia: John Malkovich.

Larry: Oh boy.

Julia: I'm scared already and Stephen Frears is directing and it's so fantastic and this is, it's been really incredible working on this movie.

Larry: And she knows that Jekyll becomes Hyde?

Julia: No, she doesn't, she's just doing her work.

Larry: Malkovich. Have you ever worked with him?

Julia: No, it's great.

Larry: Have you started already?

Julia: Um hum.

Larry: What's it like when you work, I mean every actor's different. Nolte obviously is - his presence is obvious right? The intensity. How about Malkovich?

Julia: He's tremendous. He's really tremendous. We had a couple of weeks of rehearsal and just his ideas and the way he thinks things through, he's very smart and Steven is incredibly smart and so I just sort of walk around, sort of, you know, in awe of these men.

Larry: Good acting is intelligence. It would be pretty hard to be a terrific actor and not be fairly bright about what's around you in the world.

Julia: I don't think so.

Larry: Wouldn't you say that most of the good actors you've met are bright.

Julia: Yes.

Larry: Did you know Pretty Woman, I know you don't think about whether it's going to be a hit or not, were you surprised it was?

Julia: Stunned.

Larry: Stunned.

Julia: Stunned.

Larry: No one expected it to go through the roof.

Julia: We all sort of left that movie thinking well, we had a really good time and that's what counts.

Larry: We had low expectations.

Julia: Um, well, I really don't have expectations because for me it is the uncontrollable. But I do think that, and I've worked with people that since then that worked on Pretty Woman, and we all sort of sit around laugh and say who would have thought? I mean because it was, it was great fun to work on, it was the most fun you could ever want to have at work, but it was total chaos. I mean it was sort of like, okay, we're rolling, anybody got anything funny to say? It was, and the only person who could have, I'd say that in the filming of Pretty Woman we made about 10 versions of a movie and one of them was good

Larry: And that's the one that came out.

Julia: Garry Marshall is the only person that could have weeded through all that stuff.

Larry: Cause he's certifiable.

Julia: And found the one good movie and he did it.

Larry: Was Gere fun to work with?

Julia: Great. That movie, I'm telling you, that movie was so much fun to make, it was almost sickening.

Larry: When you saw the finished version, did you say "hey, this is good?"

Julia: I probably laughed louder than anybody in the theater.

Larry: At the movie or with it? You had fun.

Julia: Yeah, I thought it was great you know, because it just, I mean it's very difficult to watch a movie that you're in that way, but you know, for whatever it's worth, I sat in there, I was so surprised, I was cracking up I thought this is so funny I can't believe how funny it is. It was hysterical. And at one point Richard was in the theater, I was sitting next to him and I said can you believe this and he said, you are really funny, but we were stunned. We just couldn't.

Larry: So in other words had they taken another one of those 10 versions this could have been disastrous.

Julia: I might not be here right now.

Larry: How do you, we keep, there's all these stories, the mysterious Julia Roberts, she disappears, she doesn't talk to anyone. You're very easy to talk to.

Julia: Thank you. I think I am too.

Larry: Where do these stories come from that you're difficult, do you think?

Julia: I think that the actuality of my life is so simple and at times can be as far as newspaper copy goes, somewhat boring, you know. The reality of my life is not going to sell off a newsstands like hotcakes, let's get real.

Larry: If we followed you around for a day, it's be boring.

Julia: I have my sort of more exciting days.

Larry: Newspapers are interest in that exciting day though right?

Julia: Right and since that day is rare, or that day is private, then they just sort of stir their own pot.

Larry: And do you dislike that or do you know just accept it. Does it go with the territory as the term goes.

Julia: I don't think there's any reason why it has to go with the territory. I don't see why you have to sacrifice a sense of privacy or a since of pride in your life because you're given an opportunity to do what you love. There's no equation there for me.

Larry: Then in a sense it is none of my business who you are married to.

Julia: It's not, but at the same time I don't try to hide that. All I'm saying is that don't camp outside my house and attack me when I come in. Don't knock my sister down trying to jump into my face. Is that too much to ask? New York City is not the safest city in the world and when men come running after you in New York City, guess what, you run. That's what you do.

Larry: Back with our remaining moments with Julia Roberts, the film is I Love Trouble co-starring Nick Nolte from Touch Tone.

Larry: We're back with Julia Roberts. How is Lyle Lovett by the way cause I love him.

Julia: He's very well.

Larry: He is a great guy. Is he as much fun to be around as, I only meet him as an interview subject.

Julia: No, he's great, he has a great sense of humor and that's the thing about Lyle that's, he's got this sort of like slanted very ironic sense of humor about things which I think is just hysterical.

Larry: How many movies ahead are you? I mean you are doing this one now, the Jekyll and Hyde thing, then what?

Julia: Then I'm doing a movie in the fall called "Grace Under Pressure" and I do a movie next spring called Alice Ocean.

Larry: Grace Under Pressure is Hemmingway's definition of class. What's it about.

Julia: There you go. It's about a young woman named Grace who at the beginning of the movie she is you know, set in the south, and she's married and has a young child and has she works in her family business which is horse breeding and come to find out on this particular day that her sort of whole life is unraveling, she didn't really notice it, and so she goes a little nuts and it's very funny, it's an incredibly clever written script. Callie Khouri wrote the script. She wrote Thelma and Louise and she has a great sense of women and life.

Larry: Is this a movie, are there major players in it?

Julia: This just sort of started so now it's just me.

Larry: And that other one you've got to go to Australia to shoot that. Looking forward to that.

Julia: I am very much.

Larry: Now, do you space this, how much time do you work, how much time you don't, how much time you get to be by yourself?

Julia: Well, you try. Sometimes its hard cause a lot of the movies need a certain time of year and so you think can't we just wait a few months and they need something or other and there's lots of schedules to take into account so you do the best you can.

Larry: I have to ask you this since everyone has some thoughts on it. The OJ Simpson matter, the abuse, any thoughts?

Julia: My own real take on it cause I have to be honest, I've been away and I haven't kept up to the minute on it. The very little that I've seen I think has been handled in a very irresponsible, sensationalistic movie of the week kind of manner on the television.

Larry: Overdone?

Julia: Completely overdone.

Larry: You've got a major star driving along a highway. It is like a movie.

Julia: But I just feel like the news has turned it into this sort of, that they're selling it, that they're selling news, that they're selling tragedy, that they're selling the complete despair and destruction of people's lives you know.

Larry: Do you think in the press there's a kind of perverse enjoyment in this.

Julia: I don't think you have to sell the news. It's the news, give the facts, keep people informed, keep people up to date and then let it go. I see like ratings points flashing across, you know, the news at night and it makes me sick and I think part of it is having been living in Europe I watch the BBC news when I come home at night and even though that's about as dry as it comes, at least there's, they seem respectful, what they're offering up is a respectful way, they're talking to people in a manner that has a certain amount of decency and decorum and the things that they're talking about, no matter how tragic, no matter how horrible, they're dealing with in a manner that is clean and clear and accurate and here are the facts, not here's what we think, not here's the body, not we got as close as we could to it, not here are the faces of all the people who are affected by this, you know, just what you need to know.