She now ranks with the multi-million dollar men's club of Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Jim Carry and Will Smith.
Julia Fiona Roberts, born October 28, 1967, in Atlanta, Georgia, to a vacuum cleaner salesman and a church secretary was destined for dreams that few will ever realize.
Her father, Walter Roberts, met and married her mother, Betty Lou Bredemus, in 1955. Both were in the Air Force entertaining military troops in a traveling play George Washington Slept Here. The play was directed by Rance Howard (the father of the astounding director Ron Howard).
Both her parents were thespian actors and had conducted many workshops for actors and playwrights prior to Julia's birth. Her father, Walter, was the founder of the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop.
Julia, was raised in Smyrna, Georgia but was born into an acting family - her sister, Lisa Roberts (Billingsley, actress, 1965), her brother, Eric Roberts (actor, 1956), her destiny was charted.
Her parents divorced in 1972 when Julia was four, and her father was remarried to Eileen Sellars (1976) who drowned in 1977. That same year Walter died of throat cancer when Julia was nine. Her mother also was remarried to Michael Motes (1972) and she now has a stepsister, Nancy (1976).
Julia, shortly after graduating from Campbell High School, joined her older sister Lisa in New York where her acting career began. In 1987 she landed a part in a small movie called Firehouse, where she played one of three young women on a fire brigade with the worst reputation in town. This film gave her a stepping-stone to others. She signed up with the Click Modeling Agency to meet the bills and enrolled in several acting classes, none of which she completed.
Eric Roberts, her brother, an established actor convinced director Eric Masterson to cast his little sister for a part with him in the drama movie Blood Red (1989), which was shelved and not released till 1990. So her professional debut didn't come until 1988 when she appeared on an episode of television's Crime Story.
Two movies followed that year Satisfaction (about five teenagers in a band) and the whimsical movie Mystic Pizza (she played Daisy, a Portuguese waitress in a small town pizza parlor in Mystic, Connecticut). From Mystic Pizza, her career was on a mountain climb.
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