DATE: Thursday, August 7, 1997              TAG: 9708070060

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  151 lines

JULIA ROBERTS: AT THE TOP OF HER GAME ON THE HEELS OF HER SUMMER HIT ``MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING'' COMES ANOTHER WINNER, ``CONSPIRACY THEORY''

TOO MUCH, TOO SOON. Is that the Julia Roberts story?

Barely out of her teens, she was an Oscar nominee for ``Steel Magnolias.'' At age 20, she got a second Oscar nomination, for ``Pretty Woman,'' and became an international superstar. The press covered her every move.

Then . . .

Bad decisions stalled Roberts' career the last decade. Off-screen, she had much-publicized affairs with many of her leading men, from Liam Neeson to Dylan McDermott. She broke off her engagement to Kiefer Sutherland three days before the wedding and ran off to Ireland with his best friend, Jason Patric. Her short-lived marriage to singer Lyle Lovett seemed to exist only by long distance.

Wild stories were printed, some even claiming she was on drugs. She took two years off, admitting it was all a bit much. Roberts had made four smash, $100 million movies in five years; after that, any film that made less was deemed a flop.

But if ``too much, too soon'' was the story, Julia Roberts, flashing that famous Cinemascope smile, says ``more'' is the story now.

The current ``My Best Friend's Wedding'' had the biggest opening weekend of any romantic-comedy in history and has remained a solid hit. Roberts was paid $12.5 million, a figure tying her with Demi Moore as the top salary ever paid a woman for a single film.

To complete the one-two punch, she opens Friday in ``Conspiracy Theory,'' a romantic-thriller with Mel Gibson. All bets are that it will be a hit.

Even though she loathes the word, her ``comeback'' is emerging as one of the top stories of this summer.

``They keep writing that I'm back,'' Roberts said laughing. ``Where have I been? It's true that I tried some offbeat things. I wanted to try something different, but they want to see me smiling all the time - always in comedies. I'm not ashamed that I tried different things.''

Among those different things were the ``Mary Reilly,'' a dreary flop in which she played the hapless maid of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Against advice, she took a small role in the Irish epic ``Michael Collins,'' opposite Neeson. Then she took another small role - one that required her to sing - in Woody Allen's musical, ``Everyone Says I Love You.''

``People talk like I've been sleeping for 12 years,'' she said. ``Now, they're printing stories - as if it's a surprise - that I'm suddenly a nice person. I'm the same as I always was. It's interesting that people seem to really want me to be happy and they think I've been miserable. They say `better adjusted' now and all that. There's no change. My life has been good.

``It's just that I'm not a very competitive person. I couldn't get used to the idea that making movies was supposed to be a kind of sports event with winners and losers.''

Still, there was a time when she was rumored to make trouble. The crew of Steven Spielberg's ``Hook'' called her Tinkerhell. While a Gallup Poll named her one of the 10 most admired women in America, there were stories on affairs with Daniel Day-Lewis, Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere and Matthew Perry, as well as a 28-year-old gondolier she met in Venice during the Allen shoot.

Aileen Joyce, author of ``Julia: The Untold Story of America's Pretty Woman,'' claimed Roberts was aggressive in seeking these affairs but dropped them instantly. ``In a second, she's gone,'' Joyce wrote. ``She avoids conflict at all cost.''

``People write fables about me,'' Roberts said. ``It's not that I don't get along with the press. They don't get along with me. If I had done all they said, I'd be wonder woman. But I refuse to develop a thick skin about it. That would be giving credence to a negative force. That would be allowing the people who have written fables about me more power.''

She most hates the stories that said she was having trouble with drugs.

``I don't know how anyone could work and be on drugs,'' she said. ``I have to have eight hours sleep a night or I'm not functioning. These stories were most harmful because my mother read them and said I was too thin - and was worried.''

Roberts and ``Conspiracy'' co-star Gibson first met a few years ago at ShowWest, a convention of theater owners in Las Vegas.

``We got into trouble,'' she said recently at New York's Regency Hotel. ``We were sitting at the head table and we were laughing it up. There was this big poster of Clint Eastwood there, and Mel cut his eyes out and held it up - looking through it like it was a mask. We were like kids.

``He's a cut-up, which means that making a movie with him is pure fun. He knows what he's doing, but he doesn't let you know. If you're looking on, you think he's a big kid.''

In ``Conspiracy Theory,'' she plays a lawyer who is romantically pursued by Gibson, a wacked-out New York cabbie who suspects governmental conspiracies at every turn: the president will die in an earthquake; the United Nations may attack at any moment. She begins to take him seriously when he is almost killed by someone trying to shut him up. They're an odd couple, but a romantic couple.

Roberts grew up in Smyrna, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, where her parents ran a small acting school. They divorced when she was 3, and Roberts and her sister, Lisa, lived with their mother. Older brother Eric stayed with their father.

She idolized her father, who died when she was 9; apparently, her stepfather was a bitter man.

Two weeks after graduating from high school, she left Georgia for New York and got jobs as a model.

Meantime, Eric Roberts received the major Hollywood star buildup, which was interrupted partly by bad films and by a near-fatal automobile crash. It was Eric who secured a first movie role for Julia, a small part in the B-budget ``Blood Red.''

Sister and brother have not spoken for years. One version of the falling-out is that he severely dislikes their mother. Another reason given is that she reportedly gave money to his former girlfriend during a child-custody battle.

Once, approached on the question, Eric Roberts said, curtly: ``If you want an interview with my sister, get one. The truth about her will come out someday.''

During two interviews with Julia Roberts, the subject of brother was off-limits.

Roberts had been spotted the night before the ``Conspiracy'' interview at a New York club with ex-husband Lovett. The two met at the wrap party for ``The Player,'' in which both appeared. Three weeks later, they married. They remain good friends.

She's tired of being asked about what it will be like to turn 30 on Oct. 28.

``Our society is totally youth-oriented when it comes to females,'' she said. ``If I had a penis, they wouldn't worry about me turning 30.''

``Would you like to borrow one?'' deadpanned Gibson, who was at the same interview.

``Not really,'' she countered, breaking into a raucous laugh. ``That's my Mel. He never misses a chance.''

Coming off two hits, she's looking for ``different'' material. ``I'm not making movies just to make money,'' she said. ``There's too much you have to put up with in this business if you don't want desperately to be in it.''

Which means the long-projected sequel to ``Pretty Woman'' is not likely to happen.

``I'm not a sequel girl,'' Roberts said. ``I'd just as soon let it be. I don't know where the characters would go, and no one has come up with the right script.

``The original script for `Pretty Woman' was pretty downbeat. She was on drugs and went back to the streets. It was turned down at other studios. Then Disney got it, and it became the film you saw. Much lighter.''

Next, she plans to appear in a remake of George Cukor's 1939 classic ``The Women'' with Meg Ryan, Candice Bergen, Blythe Danner and Marisa Tomei.

``It's nice that people always ask me if I'm happy,'' Roberts said. ``It seems to be a continuing concern, but I haven't led a tragic life. I'm happy - still. Things haven't changed.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

WARNER BROTHERS

Julia Roberts stars with Mel Gibson...

Photo

TRISTAR PICTURES

``My Best Friend's Wedding,'' starring Julia Roberts, right; Cameron

Diaz, left; and Dermot Mulroney, had the biggest opening weekend of

any romantic-comedy in history and has remained a solid hit. KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MOVIES

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