Julia Roberts My life in PICTURES

SHE’S LIT UP SCREENS FOR MORE THAN THREE DECADES AND STILL SHINES BRIGHT

- Penelope Clifton

There aren’t many leading men Julia Roberts hasn’t worked with, and there aren’t many actresses who can boast a top-notch résumé like hers with a swag of award nominations and accolades to boot. But there’s so much more to Roberts, who we fell in love within 1988’s Mystic Pizza.

It had been a life-long dream of Roberts, now 54, to become a veterinarian, but after seeing her older siblings Lisa and Eric find some success with acting, Roberts thought she’d give it a shot, too. According to her mother, Betty, she “caught the family disease”.

“I had convinced myself that I had three choices: I could get married, I could go to college, or I could move to New York,” Roberts told the New York Times at the height of her Pretty Woman fame in 1990, complete with an Oscar nomination. “Nobody was asking to get married and I didn’t want to go away to school, so I moved.”