Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 8, 1991 TAG: 9102080296
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB STRAUSS/ LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
But does she deserve to get beaten up?
Of course not. But in Roberts' latest movie, "Sleeping With the Enemy," which opens today in the Roanoke area at Valley View Mall and the Salem Valley 8, that's exactly what happens to Hollywood's reigning sweetheart. The film's Laura Burney is a battered wife who fakes her own death in order to escape from her relentless, compulsive husband. (He figures out her deception and tracks her down.)
Laura is a complex role requiring extremes of character strength and weakness, assumption of multiple false identities and emotional states, and a delicate balancing act between near-constant fear and a young woman's desire to enjoy life.
In other words, it's a few steps up on the challenge scale from the parts that have made the 23-year-old, Georgia-bred actress today's biggest female movie star.
Roberts' previous roles include a spunky, working-class teen-ager in "Mystic Pizza," a young woman with a fatal disease in "Steel Magnolias," "Pretty Woman's" heart-of-gold hooker (she just won a Golden Globe award for that one) and a medical student exploring near-death states in last summer's "Flatliners."
"This was very different from the things I've done before, obviously," Roberts said of "Enemy," which co-stars Irish actor Patrick Bergin ("Mountains of the Moon") as the psycho-husband and was directed by Joseph Ruben ("True Believer," "The Stepfather").
"I'd never really done anything that was suspenseful like that, where it isn't really until the last moment that you feel a sense of relief. Also, it appeared it would be a very taxing journey to take with this character, which was challenging."
Roberts had no idea, however, how challenging things would get last winter on "Enemy's" Carolina locations. In the middle of shooting, "Pretty Woman" opened to outstanding box office. It became the second-biggest moneymaker of 1990, catapulting Roberts to superstardom. She was suddenly the target of massive popular and media attention.
"When they called me the first weekend that `Pretty Woman' opened, I didn't believe what they were telling me until I read it in the paper," Roberts said. "It was that out of my realm of imagination. So I was grateful, I was suspended, I kind of believed it and I kind of didn't. So I just tried to get along."
"We were ecstatic about it," said "Enemy" director Ruben, referring to "Pretty Woman's" success. "Because we started with a very hot, up-and-coming actress, and we ended with a major film star. So we were just congratulating ourselves on how smart we were.
But the "Juliamania" took place mainly "far away in big cities," Ruben said, "and we were in little towns. We still had the same problems every day - putting film in the can - and that's what we concentrated on."
Roberts hardly had the time for outside distractions. "Every emotion that you see in the movie, that you feel or think about from one moment to the next, I probably went through drastically," she said. "It was physically exhausting. By virtue of size, it was the biggest part I've ever played, as far as hours spent working.
"And I did get hurt, but not because of anybody else," she revealed. "I miscalculated some things, like being knocked down and hitting the floor. I didn't realize the floor was going to be so hard. But I didn't take this job because I thought it was going going to be some day at the beach. It wound up being very interesting."
Roberts' little floor-density miscalculation relates to one of the movie's stickier marketing points. Will audiences enraptured by the actress's long legs and luxurious lips enjoy watching her brutalized on screen?
"Somebody who doesn't want to see me get beat up should stay past those scenes, because I get out of it," Roberts said. She does escape from the situation, even though it's not in the most reasonable way. But there's some sense of resolve and of safety for her at different points.
"And you get to see happy things. When I saw the movie, every time Ben came on the screen, I was so glad. The movie shows a journey more than just one isolated situation. I think it serves its purpose."
Ben, played by Kevin Anderson, is the likable neighbor Laura meets when she starts life anew in a small midwestern town. A drama teacher at the local college, Ben takes the skittish woman to his theater late one night. There, in a montage reminiscent of "Pretty Woman's" power-shopping sequence, Laura tries on a series of costumes and, for the first time in ages, unself-consciously enjoys herself.
Ruben has already been accused of ripping off one of "Pretty Woman's" most memorable sequences. He said the scene was written before anybody saw the comedy blockbuster, but he also admitted that "a lot of it got shaped by who Julia is, in the sense that she gives you so much warmth. And she happens to have one of the great smiles. A director who didn't take advantage of that would be a fool."
So would an actress who didn't. Roberts is capitalizing on "Pretty Woman's" success in a big way. She has two intriguing projects coming up: She plays a young woman who works for a wealthy leukemia victim in "Flatliners" director Joel Schumacher's "Dying Young," and she'll be Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's revisionist Peter Pan extravaganza, "Hook," opposite Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams. There is also a western with Mel Gibson in the works.
In an era when actresses constantly complain about the film industry's paucity of good work for women, no door seems closed to Roberts. She might even be leading the way toward better opportunities for actresses in general.
"If I did that, that's great," she said. "Anything that you do that helps someone or some group of people is great. But I don't work in order to achieve something like that. My goal as an actor is something that goes from moment to moment.
"Being put in that position - by virtue of accident, really - won't change what I do or why I do it or how I do it. It just sort of is what it is, and whatever good it does, all the better."
If Roberts seems somewhat unimpressed by her success and its implications, that may be because she still feels she's in a state of suspension about the whole thing.
"I'm extremely grateful, I'm bowled over, I'm not cool or nonchalant about it whatsoever," she said in a reasoned, unemotional tone. "I think it's pretty amazing, y'know? But it is out of my control. I'm very fatalistic. It's just, I did my work, and then a year later everybody loved it. What are you going to do?
"And then there's the part of me that thinks, I'm 23 years old, y'know? The part that gets on the phone with my mom and is, like, `I don't believe this.' "
Audiences may love Roberts' smile, but that's only part of stardom. Another big part involves one's ability to work with top creative collaborators. For that, she relies mainly on instinct, tempered by a little bit of advice offered by her older brother, actor Eric Roberts.
"He gave me one piece of advice a long time ago: This is show business, not show friendship. I've used that at moments. I don't use it as a general rule, though, because I'm actually quite fond of most of the people I've ever worked with."
Case in point: "Flatliners" co-star Kiefer Sutherland. He and Roberts have been a couple ever since they worked on the movie.
by CNB