From Publishers Weekly
According to Spada, star biography specialist (Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, Jacqueline Kennedy), Julia Roberts inspires every response, from the accusation by high school classmates that she "liked to steal other girls' boyfriends" to Woody Allen's praise: "She's bright, beautiful, and a pleasure to work with." This duality makes her an intriguing but unsympathetic character here. So much evidence is presented about Roberts pro and con that the book becomes a biographical mystery, inviting readers to draw their own conclusions. A self-proclaimed ugly duckling who "never really fit" in early childhood, Roberts was strongly inspired by actor brother Eric. The book moves briskly from Roberts's breakthrough role in Mystic Pizza to superstardom with Pretty Woman, a part she researched by interviewing prostitutes. Roberts "does her emotional homework," declares director Joel Schumacher during their collaboration on Flatliners, a film that co-starred her with one-time fiance Kiefer Sutherland. Other lovers who emerge with colorful clarity include Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jason Patric and country singer ex-husband Lyle Lovett. Although Spada cuttingly characterizes Roberts and Lovett as "beauty and the beast," he delineates their relationship less sharply than the other liaisons (although Matthew Perry of Friends is a vividly etched presence). Spada recounts the Roberts-Nick Nolte feud during I Love Trouble and highlights the ambivalence so many feel about her by quoting Steven Spielberg, who praised her while directing Hook and criticized her on 60 Minutes. Readers won't be as enchanted with this box-office sweetheart as they were before beginning the story, but they're likely to become caught up in Spada's incisive portrait of her personal and professional tribulations.
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From the Inside Flap
She is beloved worldwide for her effervescent smile and the way she lights up the screen in movies like "Erin Brokovich", "Mona Lisa's Smile" and, of course, "Pretty Woman." But Julia Roberts's real life has only been glimpsed in the tabloids until now. Acclaimed biographer James Spada has created a rich and exhaustively researched portrait of Julia as both an actress and as a woman. Spada went back to Julia's parents' beginnings in Georgia to unearth fascinating facts about her dysfunctional family background, her troubled childhood, and her early dating life. What he discovered may explain why Julia moved through her twenties and early thirties seemingly falling for a new co-star on every movie set. And Spada's interpretation of those romances-from the whirlwind last minute cancellation of her marriage to Kiefer Sutherland and the brooding intensity of her relationship with Jason Patric to to the sunnier and healthier long liaison with Benjamin Bratt-is juicy and fascinating reading.
Julia offers fresh details about all the star's famous movies to uncover an intensely dedicated but deeply insecure artist. After rising to superstardom at twenty-two Julia endured the onslaught of paparazzi along with her very public string of failed relationships, rumors of drug addiction, and clashes with big-name directors like Herbert Ross and Steven Spielberg. She fled Hollywood for two years, made her first "comeback" at the tender age of twenty-five, then took on a series of risky roles in movies that flopped. For the last six years, she has delighted audiences in a string of smash hits and topped the Hollywood heap as the highest paid actress in history.
Julia shows how the star has grown from a skittish girl moving through volatile relationships with charismatic co-stars to become an assured woman making her own bold-and often controversial-decisions about how to life her life.
Julia is as lively and vivacious as the star it explores. You will not be able to put it down.
