Magazines > 2010 > Elle-US (September-2010)

Julia Roberts will be honored with the Donostia Award for lifetime achievement at next month’s San Sebastian International Film Festival in northern Spain, organizers announced Saturday.

In a statement, festival officials praised Roberts for appearing in some of the biggest boxoffice hits of the past two decades and cited her academy noms for “Steel Magnolias” and “Pretty Woman,” as well as her Oscar for “Erin Brockovich.”

Roberts’ latest film “Eat Pray Love,” co-starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem, will be shown out of competition at the 58th edition of the festival which runs from Sept. 17-25 in the Atlantic seaside resort.

Previous Donostia Award winners include Glenn Ford, Lana Turner, Francis Ford Coppola, Max von Sydow, Woody Allen and Ian McKellan.

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Movie Productions > Eat Pray Love > Movie Stills

The men of ‘Eat Pray Love’ — Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup, Richard Jenkins and director Ryan Murphy — sit down with ET’s own Mark Steines in beautiful Napa Valley to sing the praises of Julia Roberts!

“I think she’s an amazing actress, has done amazing work,” says Javier. “Julia has this thing of making you feel safe and secure, helping you to be the best of yourself in your performance.”

“I just love her, I just love her,” says Richard. “She’s found her ‘Eat Pray Love.’ I think Julia is in a great place in her life. … She’s really happy.”

“She’s very quick — she’s sly, and smart, and watch out for her,” says Billy. “She’s a bonafide movie star, and has been for most of my adult life.” Joking self-deprecatingly about co-star Javier, Billy says, “We gotta go with what we have, right? He’s got masculinity and I’ve got idiocy.” Read more

This morning, Julia Roberts and the cast of Eat Pray Love (sans James Franco) sat down with reporters to discuss their new film. As leading lady, Roberts was obviously the focus of the press attention, as she rattled off stories about working with Javier Bardem — whom she says she was “terrified” to work with at first — and how much weight she really gained while shooting with all that pasta (for the record, she looked amazing in person). Read on to hear her thoughts!

On if she had read the book before shooting:
Julia Roberts: I had read it before it became so widely popular, and I thought it was so terrific 30 pages into it, that I went on Amazon.com and sent one to my best friend in Chicago, and said, “Let’s read this.”

On her own love advice to young women:
JR: Talk to your mother. Get your mother to tell you what she really knows, and don’t take advice from actors. We don’t know anything.

On her many outfits in the film:
JR: I think the most costume changes I’ve had in a movie is maybe 40 or 50. I think that’s maybe average. This, by the time I think we were done, was maybe 103. [Michael Dennison] worked tirelessly over making it really authentic and making it great . . . It was like wardrobe Olympics, this movie.

For more from Roberts, read more.

On meeting Liz Gilbert [who wrote the memoir]:
JR: I met her in Rome. I didn’t want to meet her before that, because I knew that she and Ryan [Murphy] were in close communication, and I obviously, in this endeavor, the first step I took was to put my complete and total trust in Ryan, which was one of the smarter things that I’ve done in four years. So I knew that his paper interpretation of her that he gave me as my reference was all I would need, and I was also worried about falling too much in love with her, so that I would try to be her, as opposed of interpreting her as an actor . . . And so she came to Rome, and she was a delight.

On her favorite eats on the shoot:
JR: Italy, I mean, really I have to say, they did go to great elaborate pains to make food that I had to eat endlessly in the heat. So there was this one plate of pasta that was — all other circumstances removed — delicious pasta. It was simple spaghetti. It was delicious. . . India, well let’s just say this. I, as a mother, pack like a 10-pound box of medicines and Band-aids and alcohol and all these things — which I never had to open — and a 10-pound box of snacks, so that might have been my favorite bite. Every time I turned to that box late at night, a granola bar.

On how much she ate:
JR: How many bowls of pasta did I eat? [Ryan Murphy: "Six"]. . . The pizza, we went to the place where she had pizza, got there at eight in the morning and proceeded to shoot, and I started my day with eight entire slices of pizza in 45 minutes. The deliciousness of something wears a tiny a bit after piece seven . . . I would eat an entire slice in a take. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea. Ryan keeps telling people I gained 10 pounds; it was 11 actually. But I loved every pound, and everyone said it was going to drop right off in India, and that didn’t happen. I didn’t get that memo. Read more

An adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” is about to hit theaters, thanks to another intrepid woman: Julia Roberts. In a funny, frank interview, the actress speaks with this week’s Entertainment Weekly about her family, her career, and learning how to give peace a chance.

Though she’s worked steadily since marrying cinematographer Danny Moder in 2002, Roberts has become known for turning down as many blockbusters as she’s starred in, a development that stems from her desire to spend as much time with her family as possible. But the appeal of “Eat, Pray, Love” was too strong for her to pass up.

Portion of the Q&A, running in this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly:
EW: Did you have a spit bucket by your side for all of the food scenes?

Roberts: Well, first of all, that grosses me out. But the truth of the matter is, there probably would have come a point when I would have used it. If you look at any of the scenes of eating, by the end of the scene, I’m done eating. Like in the scene with the pizza, by the time the scene is over, I’ve eaten the entire piece. When we were in Naples, we started shooting at 8 in the morning, and I think by 8:45 I’d eaten 8 or 10 pieces of pizza. Pizza was what I ate all day.

EW: Did you want it to look like you had gained weight after the Italy portion of the film?

Roberts: You know, we talked about that. Because I didn’t want people to say, “Well, she’s supposed to go to Italy and eat all this food, but she looks the same in the whole thing.” So I talked to [director] Ryan [Murphy] about it. And one of the things I love the most about Ryan is that he has a real legitimate answer for everything. There’s nothing that he hasn’t considered weeks before I’ve thought of the question. When it came to that, I said, “What do we do?” And he said, “By the time Liz got to Italy, she was so under-weight that the weight she put on really got her back to normal and then a little bit more.” It wasn’t like she [became] a tub. So because I started at normal weight for me, by the time we left Rome and I was 7 to 10 pounds heavier, that was probably the truth of what she was dealing with. I could’ve used a bigger pair of jeans when I went off to India!

EW: Have you ever been in such a dark and sad place as Liz finds herself in the movie?

Roberts: As a younger person, [with] problems that are more unformed and immature, I’m sure. There’s a moment where you’re hitting the compass and it’s just not giving you the way to go.

EW: When was that for you exactly?

Roberts: Well, my whole 20s was like that: trying out this idea of things, working a lot, and moving away from home at 17 and being away from my mom. So there are times when you’re figuring out those puzzles where you really do feel lost. “Do I really want to be an actor? Is it really going to work out?” You want to talk about a series of breakdowns? Talk to any actors in their 20s. You just never know if it’s going to click. Read more

ET takes you behind the scenes of Julia Roberts‘ romantic journey around the world, and we’re talking to the men of ‘Eat Pray Love.’

First up is the ex-husband Steven, played by Billy Crudup. The actor says of his character, “He’s there basically to send her on her way to self-discovery.”

Next up on her adventure, Julia’s character Elizabeth Gilbert meets David, played by James Franco, and things get serious. “When she sees something that has potential she goes after it,” James says of his onscreen love interest. “There are positive things that come out of all the relationships for everyone.”

Then there’s the confidant Richard, played by Richard Jenkins. Jenkins says of the role, “[He] sees this woman struggling and searching and he befriends her.”

Who better to play Julia’s onscreen soul mate Felipe than Javier Bardem? Javier says of his costar, “She really helped me a lot to play, to enjoy the ride. I am truly thankful for what she has done for me in this movie.” ‘Eat Pray Love’ hits theaters August 13.

The Oprah Winfrey Network announced yesterday that they are producing five OWN original two-hour documentaries with Julia Roberts, Forest Whitaker, Goldie Hawn, Gabriel Byrne and Mariel Hemingway.

‘Extraordineray Moms’ is a documentary hosted by Julia Roberts exploring the power of mothers, featuring courageous women who demonstrate a fierce desire to protect the future of all children. Roberts, who stars in the upcoming film ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, is also an executive producer on the project.

‘Extraordineray Moms’ shows that one mom can truly change the course of history. These women are living proof that a mother’s strength can fight armies, outwit politicians, demand that corporations change their priorities and work to preserve the ecological balance of the world.