"I think it's a positive thing because she's a really great actress, but yeah, sometimes it can be a little annoying," Emma Roberts, who surely knew going in that she would end up compared to her famous aunt at some point (or lots), admitted in 2008.
To be sure, it probably doesn't always feel awesome to turn in a great, crowd-pleasing performance and then be rewarded with the question of whether you're, at best, just like somebody else. But generally no disrespect was meant to the many, many ladies—from Sandra Bullock, whose breakout role came just a few years after Roberts', to Jennifer Garner, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone and the star's own niece—who've been subject to the comparison over the years.
Rather, the frequency with which that phrase has been used says much more about the woman whose name apparently connotes the ultimate in cinematic appeal.
"She's like Julia Roberts," The Last Song director Julie Ann Robinson told E! News in 2010, referring to her film's star, Miley Cyrus. "I feel Miley can do anything—action, comedy, drama. She's got it all."
"When I was younger, someone once told me, 'You kind of look like Julia Roberts in profile,'" Meghan Markle, who counted Roberts among her biggest inspirations as an actor, told Glamour in 2017. "It was the best compliment of all time."
Lamenting the decrease in Roberts' screen time in the '00s after Ocean's Eleven, when she married Danny Moder and had her three children, various producers talked to the New York Times in 2009 about the Julia Roberts-shaped hole in the Hollywood landscape and whether any actress was capable of filling it.
"Nobody has stepped into the vacuum...Right now, people are desperate for the heir apparent to be Katherine Heigl," one producer said.
That didn't turn out quite as those people intended, but the point was that Hollywood was positively cheering Roberts' return to a big leading role that year in Duplicity.
"Julia has a unique ability to be steely, but winsome and lovable all at the same time," Universal production president Donna Langley told the Times.
Emphasis on "unique," but the qualities that insiders would espouse as being specific to Roberts never stopped anyone from seeking those qualities out in others—and then speculating on whether those women could match or even exceed Roberts' appeal.
"Why is there plenty of room for guys in this business and they don't pit them up against each other? It's so stupid," Bullock remarked in 1996. "There's room for everybody. I think Julia and I should do a film where we make fun of this whole thing, like we're not even the leads. They just have an outtake of like a movie premiere where we get into a huge fight or something. That would be hysterical."
In 2003, Roberts recalled to Oprah Winfrey being the subject of an article called "The Next Julia Roberts" that was actually funny—"because in his story, I am the next Julia Roberts."
Funny how that did not put an end to the conversation, though.
contd
