Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was up for Michael Corleone in 'The Godfather,' but, as I was only 10 at the time, I think Mr. Coppola made the right choice. The Julia Roberts role in 'Pretty Woman' held a bizarre allure for me. But, it's silly to look back with regret.
I was the lead in 'Interview With The Vampire', until Tom Cruise decided he was interested. I was in 'The Wings Of The Dove' with Uma Thurman, until that got cancelled. I was in 'Shakespeare In Love' with Julia Roberts, until that fell apart.
You have to understand, when you're 15 and you're doing this Steven Spielberg movie with megastars - Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts - you know you want to be cool. I don't know how cool I'm going to look with my belly button out!
In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: 'We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.'
When I was coming up, it was the golden age. It was Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan, and Reese Witherspoon was starting. You really had, 'Who is America's Next Sweetheart?' every couple of years. And then this sort of bromance slacker thing took over.
People talk about this Julia Roberts almost like it's a cup of Pepsi. People think Julia Roberts is something they created. The fact is, 26 years ago, there was this scrunched-up little pink baby named Julia Roberts. I am a girl, like anybody else.
These days, no celebrity on a magazine cover, including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, or Leonardo DiCaprio, could possibly match the visual punch of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, grinning boy, goofily peeking out at us on the newsstand.
Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful technique, and use clear exposition to bring you up to speed.
Today is indeed an historic occasion when as a first chair-in-office woman I hand over to another woman chair in office, your Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in the presence of a woman head of the Commonwealth, Her Royal Highness, Her Majesty the Queen of England.
Jeff Smith was the Julia Child of my generation. When his television show, 'The Frugal Gourmet,' made its debut on PBS in the 1980s, it conveyed such genuine enthusiasm for cooking that I was moved for the first time to slap down cold cash for a collection of recipes.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus is just perfect in 'Veep.' She gets to show off the spiky claws beneath her patrician finesse. The obvious way to play 'Veep' would be to make Louis-Dreyfus a folksy heroine, one with more common sense or populist heart than her enemies. But she isn't one.
I was in Italy in 1992 working on magazine articles when I got a call from the Italian travel commission. They asked, would I mind being an escort for an older woman? I told them I don't do that kind of work, but then they said it was Julia Child, and I said I'd be right there.
When we were working on 'Julie & Julia,' I went back to the Julia Child cookbook and made some things I haven't made in a while, one being beef bourguignon, which to me is a hilariously 1960s dish that everyone felt they had to serve at a dinner party or they weren't a grown-up.
My dream role would be someone anything that Meryl Streep can do. 'Julia and Julia' - I thought that was beautiful. She just had the essence of her. To truly become someone, invoking emotions like happiness and sadness and everything in between, that's what I want to be able to do.
This June, I'll travel once again to the Food and Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. For many years, my dear friend Julia Child and I have teamed up to teach classes together at the event; for the past seven years, my daughter, Claudine, has been my cooking partner on stage.
My skin still crawls if you call me a movie star. I get embarrassed. I think, don't be ridiculous. Maybe it's because I'm British. To me, Julia Roberts that's a movie star. But when people do call me one, that, I think, is an enormous compliment but, my God, is that a responsibility!
OK, I wasn't as successful as, say, Julia Roberts, but I'd spent years in a very respectable career, some big American films but a host of other smaller, really exciting, maybe experimental films, being paid rubbish but working with fine people, that was what I thought I was known for.
I read '1984' at a precocious age, like 8, and when I did the math, I realized that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, was born the same year I was, 1957. I read that book over and over again with the 1960s as a backdrop: anti-war and anti-bomb protests and this general pervasive sense of doom.
I think that 'Floor Sample' is a story of resiliency, a lifelong spiritual search, and a lifelong sense of spiritual companionship that is most often expressed as creativity. My desire in writing the book was to step from behind the icon of 'Julia the teacher' and introduce 'Julia the artist.'
My own life is wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I'd gladly choose that of Julia Child or Dr. Seuss: two outrageously original people, each of whom fashioned an idiosyncratic wisdom, passion for life, and sense of humor into an art form that anyone and everyone could savor.
Playing a plainer role means everything is dependent on the credentials of the actor, not the fact that they are as pretty as Julia Roberts. People start to look at their talent rather than their appearance. And playing the ugly part often means less time in the make-up chair, which is a great benefit on set.
Since the advent of the Internet - more recently compounded by blogging - everyone can be a published voice. Any cowardly, anonymous anger-monger can have an audience of thousands. That doesn't make them a journalist any more than my throwing an onion and a few carrots into a pot of boiling water makes me Julia Child.
I know it affected me when I saw certain actors growing up. I had a drama teacher that would take us to see plays in New York, and it was seeing James Earl Jones and Raul Julia - I mean, this guy comes from the place my mother comes from. He's doing Shakespeare right now, and it doesn't seem to matter that he has an accent.
Here are a few of the actors who have brought my novels to TV life: Bill Pullman, Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Julian Sands, Gena Rowlands, Rob Lowe, Julia Ormond, Chelsea Hobbs, Tate Donovan, Anne Heche, Max Martini, Campbell Scott, Kimberly Paisley-Williams, Alexa Vega, and the late legends Richard Kiley and Kim Hunter.
For me, it's the unexpected and surprising combinations of produce that are the most exciting and lure me into the kitchen for a little bit of experimenting. Apples and sweet potatoes together? Who knew? Carrots with grapes? Okay. I may not be Julia Child, but I can do pretty well with a simple recipe and a lot of enthusiasm.
There's songs you listen to at really heavy times, and you associate those songs with being depressed. 'English Rose' by The Jam, I can't listen to - it's just too heavy for me. 'Julia' by The Beatles, too. That popped up the other day, and I had to skip to the next song. They're both really awesome, moving songs, but I can't listen to them.
It's no accident that Julia Child appeared on public television - or educational television, as it used to be called. On a commercial network, a program that actually inspired viewers to get off the couch and spend an hour cooking a meal would be a commercial disaster, for it would mean they were turning off the television to do something else.
