Julia Roberts is often remembered for her charming smile and romantic comedies, but her career has shown a range of strength and depth in her performances. Five films, including 'Closer', 'Ocean's Eleven', and 'Erin Brockovich', demonstrate her ability to convey complex emotions and characters, making her more than just a pretty face.
Rom-com superstardom can make people weirdly lazy about Julia Roberts. They remember the smile, the laugh, the posters, the box-office heat, and then act like the whole career was built on charm alone.
That misses the real thing. Roberts became massive because the charm had fight in it. Even when she was being funny or romantic, there was usually impatience, pride, hurt, or survival sitting right under the surface. These five films prove how strong that screen presence can get when the material knows what to do with it.
Roberts can be cold, magnetic, furious, and so much more. That range is why the movie-star label actually means something with her. 5 'Closer' Mike Nichols lets everyone in Closer sound intelligent while behaving terribly, which is exactly why the movie still stings. Anna Cameron gets pulled into the emotional wreckage between Dan Woolf , Alice Ayres , and Larry Gray , and she never feels like the safe “adult” in the room.
Anna is controlled, yes, but the control often looks more like exhaustion than wisdom. She knows desire can humiliate people, and she still keeps stepping into it. Roberts strips away the easy warmth audiences usually expect from her. Anna’s face often looks guarded, almost tired of being wanted by men who turn attraction into possession.
Her scenes with Larry are especially brutal because the marriage has turned into a contest of confession, punishment, and sexual power. Closer uses Roberts against her own romantic image, and that choice gives the film real bite. She is no fantasy here.
She is a woman trying to stay composed while everyone keeps demanding access to the parts of her she would rather keep private. 4 'Ocean’s Eleven' A casino heist movie packed with Danny Ocean , Rusty Ryan , Linus Caldwell , Basher Tarr , Frank Catton , and Reuben Tishkoff could easily reduce Tess Ocean to “the ex-wife prize. ” Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven avoids that trap by making her taste matter.
Tess is the reason Danny’s confidence has a weakness. He can plan around vaults, cameras, guards, timing, and Terry Benedict ’s empire, but he cannot treat Tess like another piece of the job without exposing how badly he still wants her respect. Roberts does a lot with stillness here. Tess has heard Danny’s charm before, which makes her the rare person in the movie who is almost immune to the sparkle.
That changes the rhythm whenever she appears. The heist is sleek and funny, but the romantic thread gives Danny’s cool-guy routine a bruise. Tess is not impressed by the performance of being clever and wants proof that he understands the consequences. In a film full of perfect timing, Roberts brings the one thing Danny cannot simply steal back. 3 'Erin Brockovich' The miracle of Erin Brockovich is how messy it lets its hero be.
Erin Brockovich is broke, unemployed, raising three kids, angry at being dismissed, and tired of people treating her clothes, voice, and attitude like evidence against her intelligence. Then she starts digging into medical records tied to Pacific Gas and Electric’s contamination of Hinkley’s water, and the film becomes a legal drama powered by outrage that feels completely personal. Erin talks fast because she has spent her life fighting to be heard before someone shuts the door.
She dresses the way she wants, flirts when she wants, swears when she wants, and still does the work better than the people looking down on her. The case matters because the victims matter to her as people, not files. Roberts earned the Oscar here through more than charisma. She made Erin’s anger useful, specific, and impossible to patronize.
COLLIDER. Collider · Quiz Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you.
One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one. 🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → QUESTION 1 / 10TONE 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do.
ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 2 / 10THEME 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen.
EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 3 / 10STRUCTURE 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety.
ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 4 / 10VILLAIN 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance.
EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 5 / 10ENDING 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later.
EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 6 / 10WORLD 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation.
BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 7 / 10CRAFT 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 8 / 10PROTAGONIST 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 9 / 10PACE 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 10 / 10AFTERMATH 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is… Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. BEST PICTURE 2020 Parasite You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another.
Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
BEST PICTURE 2023 Everything Everywhere All at Once You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful.
This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. BEST PICTURE 2024 Oppenheimer You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens.
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
BEST PICTURE 2015 Birdman You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible.
Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. BEST PICTURE 2008 No Country for Old Men You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning.
The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest.
No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 2 'My Best Friend’s Wedding' Julianne Potter is a disaster, and that is the whole thrill of My Best Friend’s Wedding.
She finds out her best friend Michael O’Neal is marrying Kimmy Wallace , panics, and turns a romantic comedy setup into a sabotage mission against a woman who has done almost nothing wrong. That could have made the movie unbearable. Roberts saves the whole thing by letting Julianne be funny, jealous, charming, insecure, mean, and painfully aware of her own bad timing.
The genius is that the film refuses to reward her selfishness with the usual fantasy ending. Kimmy is sweet without being stupid, Michael is not some secret soulmate waiting to wake up, and George Downes keeps pointing out the emotional truth Julianne wants to dodge. Roberts lets the audience love Julianne while also knowing she is wrong. That is a harder trick than it looks.
Julianne, in the end, has to accept that love sometimes arrives too late, and the person you want may still belong with someone else. But the film keeps you hooked and invested throughout. 1 'Notting Hill' Notting Hill understands movie-star fantasy better than almost any romantic comedy of its era. Anna Scott is famous enough to make ordinary life impossible, and William Thacker is ordinary enough to make her feel, briefly, like she can breathe.
The setup sounds light, almost impossible to mess up: a Hollywood star walks into a London bookshop and falls for the awkward owner. The reason it lasts is that the film keeps remembering how strange and painful that fantasy would be for the person everyone is staring at. Roberts brings her own celebrity history into Anna without turning the role into self-pity.
The dinner scene with William’s friends matters because Anna is allowed to be funny, bruised, competitive, and honest in a room that slowly stops treating her like an image. The “just a girl” line became famous for a reason, but the real power sits in everything around it: the failed timing, the public exposure, the fear of being loved as an idea rather than a person.
Notting Hill is the Roberts classic that knows exactly why people adore her and exactly how lonely adoration can become. Like Follow Followed Notting Hill pg-13 Romance Comedy Release Date May 28, 1999 Runtime 124 minutes Director Roger Michell Writers Richard Curtis Cast See All Powered by Expand Collapse
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