"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

From her Oscar-nominated role as Best Supporting Actress in Steel Magnolias in 1989, Julia Roberts has managed to have much of her roles be the finger on the pulse into the psyche of the everyday American woman. This has proven true from her Best Actress Oscar-nominated role in Pretty Woman to Sleeping With The Enemy to Notting Hill to Runaway Bride to Notting Hill to her Best Actress Oscar-winning role in Erin Brokovich to Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve and countless others.

Now the 42 year-old actress hopes to work her magic with women once again with her role as author Elizabeth Gilbert in a film adaptation of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love. Roberts says the decision of playing Elizabeth in a film version of the book was a no-brainer for her as she was a huge fan of the book

“I read the book before it became hugely popular,” Julia claims, “And I was glad about that because I am very suggestible. So I’ll be swayed. I’ll be determined to not like something, or I’ll be determined to like it better than four million other people.”

“So I had read it before it became so wildly popular,” she continues, “And thought it was so terrific, that thirty pages into it, got on Amazon.com and sent one to my best friend in Chicago and said, “Let’s read this in tandem, because I think it’s going to get real good real fast.”

Julia also says the opportunity of traveling to Naples in Italy, Bali in Indonesia, and Pataudi in India was too good to pass up doing.”

“[Deciding to do it] was weeks, because it’s not just committing to a job,” she says, “You’re committing to so much travel and so much time away from home. And it is working every day. And it’s just a lot of stuff. A lot more math goes into a decision like this, than just, ‘I don’t want to drive to Sony three days

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

a week for a couple months.’

“It’s funny. [Co-star]Richard [Jenkins] said something very witty in Mexico about becoming an actor to see the world,” Roberts adds, “And I think that’s one of the things that was hugely interesting and ultimately gratifying for all of us was to really make those efforts and go to those places and have a more authentic experience to try to portray. That was a boring answer. I’m sorry.”

Roberts notes that not only did the filming process of Eat, Pray, Love involve traveling to three different countries, but it involved shooting in chronological order.

“For me, it was a great luxury to shoot it in chronological order,” she says, “I think it was almost a necessity of emotional evolution. And you can’t start any movie in Bali and then leave. So there’s that. But I think that it was important for us to create the steps that she took and understand very clearly how she got from one point to the next and one place to the next, and how the relationships evolved and what she gleaned from each one to the next and then to Bali.”

Julia then, elaborated on her experience traveling to the three countries by discussing her “favorite site” and “favorite bite” of each place.

“Italy, I mean, really, I have to say, but [director] Ryan [Murphy] and [producer] Dede [Gardner]< did go to great elaborate pains to make amazing food that I had to eat endlessly in the heat,” Roberts recalls, “So there was this one plate of pasta that we remember, that was actually, all other circumstances removed, delicious pasta, super simple spaghetti with a little tomato sauce. I remember this. It was delicious. So that would have been my favorite bite. My favorite site? Really when I think about being in Rome for that long, I think about the lunch scene that I have with all of my friends there where I order for everyone. And sitting at

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

the head of that table looking at all of these really lovely people who are putting every effort into everything that we were doing together, it was a beautiful sight. That’s what I picture when I think of Rome. God that was long, and that was only the first country.”

“India, well let’s just say this,” she continues, “I, as a mother, pack a ten-pound box of medicines and Band-Aids and Tylenol and all these things, which I never had to open, and a ten-pound box of snacks. So that might have been my favorite bite, and favorite site, every time I turned to that little box late at night for a granola bar. But my favorite site in India? There were these extraordinary women in the village of Rajahstan. They wear the bright colors and all the embroidered jewelry. And they are elaborate and elegant and profoundly stunning. And I had one of our translators one day. It was the Thums Up village, that’s where they were. I asked what the story was behind the bright colors and the embroidery and the jewelry and all this stuff. And she said it shows that she’s married, and that if her husband passes away, she takes it all off. And I thought that was pretty amazing. And Bali, favorite site? There’s no bad site in Bali. Favorite bite? I don’t know, their fresh mango after granola bars at midnight. That was refreshing.”

One particular aspect of filming the movie that got a lot of coverage in the tabloid press was how much food Roberts ate during the eating scenes.

“I mean, how many bowls of pasta did I eat?” she replies, “Was it like six? It was all delicious. Ryan and Dede. they hired people who would just be in charge of making it look great and taste great. The pizza, we went to Naples, to where she had eaten that pizza, and got there at 8:00AM, sat down

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

to shoot and proceeded to start my day with eight entire slices of pizza in 45 minutes. The deliciousness of something wears a tiny bit after piece seven, just because you are speed eating.”

“But that scene in particular, I sort of relished just wolfing it down,” Julia adds, “Because I felt like she was so excited to be there. She so excited to be eating this pizza, and I would eat an entire slice in a take. I don’t know why I thought that was a great idea. Ryan keeps telling people I put on ten pounds, but it was a little less than that. But I loved every pound. Everybody says, ‘Oh, it’s going to drop right off in India.’ I didn’t get that memo. That didn’t happen.”

Another aspect of the film Julia says she enjoyed about filming was the wardrobe she wears as Elizabeth Gilbert in the film. She was asked whether she got to keep any of it.

“Well, I want to keep everything,” Roberts replies, “Though, so far, it’s in a warehouse and we’re looking for it. I think maybe the most costume changes that I’ve ever had in a movie that was 40 or 50 if you’re in a lot of a movie. This, I think by the time that we were done with it, was about a 103. The costume designer Michael Dennison worked tirelessly over really making it authentic and really making it great. Every once in a while, he’d be working so hard on what we were trying to accomplish for my character, then I would suddenly realize he was doing everybody else, then I, then all the extras.”

“It was like wardrobe Olympics in this movie,” she continues, “I loved everything. It was definitely a joy from one country to the next and one scene to the next. I like the ‘it’s time’ scene. I liked that outfit because it needed to be something that was simple because

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

we were just hanging out and this was just how we are, but it also had to be pretty and I thought that he found the perfect little thing. That is in my closet actually.”

But like the title suggests, Roberts contends that the film is more about traveling to exotic locales, eating food, and finding love.

“I think that if you’ve gotten to a place in your life where you have found a capacity to eat and nourish yourself in that way,” Julia says, “And love and nourish your life in that way, that somewhere along the way you’ve figured out your own identity and how to pray and relate to an energy or a creation that’s more than you, or else you can’t accomplish those other things. Now how you do it and how you relate to it and what you name it, I think, becomes insignificant to the act of understanding it. And Javier told me that once and I’m just repeating it.”

The Javier in question is none other than Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who plays Felipe, a man Elizabeth ends up falling in love with on her trip. Bardem is best known for his Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winning role as creepy Anton Chigurh in the 2007 film No Country For Old Men. Julia shared with us her initial reluctance to work with Bardem after seeing him play Chigurh.

“It’s been well reported that I was a little terrified to be around him after No Country For Old Men,” she recalls, “And I’m sorry to say at one point he pulls out a picture from No Country For Old Men and I was like, ‘My eyes, my eyes!’ I just really had gotten a good grip on the way he really looks, and then he kind of gets it back in there. But it was just great fun to play.”

“He comes across as incredibly comfortable with his acting and his performing, and it really does

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

put you at ease,” Roberts adds, “I said to him near the end, ‘You know, I thought you would be so intense and broody and weird, and I would just have to be handling you and stuff. And you’re so sweet and funny, and this was so easy.’ And he goes, ‘I’m not normally. I just wanted to try it once to see how it worked.’ I’m really glad he did.”

Roberts, then, elaborated on Javier’s spirited dedication to the film.

“I went off to Bali and Javier showed up and it was like deciding to get a puppy,” she says, “You have everything in your house worked out. ‘Oh, my life is so settled, it’s so fixed. You know, I will get that puppy.’ And then the puppy comes in and you’re like, ‘OK, I’m way too tired to have a puppy.’ He came in with all this gusto and enthusiasm and excitement, and ‘Let’s have lunch. I want to read some scenes and go over some stuff.’”

“And you just go, ‘Shut up,’” Julia adds, “And then you realize, ‘Oh, wait, no. Oh, this is getting good. Yeah, let’s have lunch, let’s go over the scenes, let’s look at the stuff.’ And his excitement was so contagious. Each time we went to a new country we got ramped up again for a whole new group of people and a whole new experience, and it really did infuse us with energies that we thought were long gone.”

The next co-star Julia spoke of her experience with is Richard Jenkins, who plays a Texan Elizabeth befriends during her time in India.

“I went to India to see Richard, we had such a great time in rehearsal, but I think I was probably the most nervous because that relationship sort of informs a certain anxiety and nervousness in my character,” she recalls, “And he’s so tall and he talks really loud. And we just had the greatest time. He’s so kind

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

in all these scenes the way he just presents them. It’s like surgery, and so precise, that really I had to just not get lost in that.”

“Really, the James Taylor line is a classic example of just reenacting a moment where I was just doing what I’m supposed to do, which is not really be listening, and just get lost in his big eyes and his sweetness and say, ‘God, has anyone ever told you look like James Taylor?’” Roberts continues, “Have you heard anything I just said to you? So it was great up until the very last day. And we sat and had dinner together, and for me, just became friends for life over that dinner, just sealed the deal.”

Another actor she spoke of working with is Billy Crudup who plays Elizabeth’s ex-husband Steven, who Elizabeth divorces in order to find herself.

“I have to say that Billy Crudup is one of my favorite actors,” Julia professes, “I’ve seen him on stage, I’ve seen him in movies, and he’s just always been one of my very favorites. So one of my concerns with him playing the husband that I leave, was I didn’t want anybody to not, at that early in the movie, to disconnect with what I was going on to do. I want them to stay with me. And Billy, I think in a lot of ways, just had the greatest challenge to help create a marriage that you believe in, and believe these people had a significant relationship, and that it just fell apart in their hands. And he would do things like the scene in the car in the rain, talking about, ‘I’ll go back to school. I’ll be a schoolteacher.’”

“All these little quirky things that I felt helped inform their relationship in such a way that you understood why they were together, and then you understood why they split up,” she adds, “It was like a magic trick and

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

I don’t know how he did it. It was just amazing, and so great and fun to do that with him. The sad part was that then it was over and I had to leave him.”

Julia shared her feelings on working with actress Viola Davis, who plays Elizabeth’s best friend Delia in the film.

“It was so fabulous,” Roberts gushes, “I say this was four movies and there was a person who tethered me to the world. And Billy was my world in New York, but he didn’t keep me tied to it. Viola was the one that has the great lines in all of our scenes and the great line about getting a tattoo on your face.”

“And she’s just an amazing actress and it was so nice to get to know her and to watch her perform and she’s very friendly and her talent is so ferocious that I was glad to sit and eat cupcakes with her because she’s a lovely woman,” she continues, “And I thought what an honor that I got to share that time, as well as space in a scene together. She’s great, she’s wonderful.”

Finally, Julia shared with us what she called her “love affair” with the film’s director and co-writer Ryan Murphy, best known as the creator of both the FX series Nip/Tuck and the Fox TV megahit Glee.

“I put a lot of eggs in his basket.” Roberts says of him, “And he never for one second of five months of traveling, ever let me down, ever wasn’t there to hold my hand, coax me into another bowl of pasta, or just give me that extra piece of encouragement that I needed.”

Roberts also talked about what drove her often emotionally-charged performance as Elizabeth in Eat, Pray, Love

“Well, it’s interesting that this was one of the first situations I had been in that did call for a lot of emotional availability,” she says of the experience, “It was all there.

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

Ryan set it all up so perfectly, that really some of the scenes that I had with Billy. All of the text was there, all of our work that we had done together was there, the relationship that we were forming as friends was there. There would just come a point where all I would have to do was think about what these people were really going through.”

“What the truth of whatever the situation was, and I felt like it would all just be right there in front of me, which is kind of amazing,” Julia adds, “But it really what she wrote about, and what her experience was is so rich, and her ability to share all those feelings is so keen, that I felt like if I just really pondered what that spot must have felt like, whatever it was we were doing that day, it would just appear. think you have to find a way to relate to all of it. This particular journey that she goes on, it’s a lot for me to try and think about and intellectualize and then let all of that go and just connect to all the people that she encounters as a very open vessel. That’s what I think she did.”

Julia was asked whether she was ready for the level of change in her life as a married woman with children that Elizabeth experiences over the course of the film.

“Well, not in the urgent pursuit way that she’s experiencing it,” Roberts says, “But I definitely knew that my life would continue to evolve until I found that place I could fully occupy and live in which is the home that I have now.”

“But I relate to her search and her pursuit,” she adds. “And it was definitely great to have a fulfilled sense of my own life and be playing some of these scenes and then come home at the end of the

"America's sweetheart goes Zen"

day and ‘Okay. Everybody is here. We’re good.’”

Finally, Roberts was asked if she had met Elizabeth Gilbert.

“I did meet her,” Julia replies, “I met her in Rome. I didn’t want to meet her before that because I knew that she and Ryan were in close communication. And obviously as an endeavor, the first step that I took was putting my complete and total trust in Ryan, which was one of the smarter things I’ve done in four years.”

“But, so I knew that his paper interpretation of her that he gave me as my reference was all that I would need,” she continues, “And I was also worried about actually falling too in love with her that I would try to be her as opposed to just interpret her as an actor. That’s why I didn’t want to meet her until we had done so much I couldn’t change it. She came to Rome and she was a delight. She’s like a warm hug, the second you lay eyes on her.”