Julia Roberts

Born Julie Fiona Roberts in Smyrna, Georgia, on October 28, 1967, the actress emerged as everyone's favourite pretty woman aged 21. With two Oscar nominations to her name (a supporting nod for the 1989 tearjerker Steel Magnolias and a leading lady bid for Pretty Woman), she was forced to mature in public under the Hollywood spotlight. High profile engagements to actors Dylan McDermott and Kiefer Sutherland became tabloid fodder, and her reported antics on the set of Steven Spielberg's Hook earned her the moniker "Tinkerhell".

She pulled a Greta Garbo-esque disappearing act in 1991 surfacing briefly as herself in Robert Altman's 1992 film The Player - and emerged focused and triumphant with the 1993 blockbuster The Pelican Brief. But despite well-reviewed performances in Michael Collins, alongside one-time boyfriend Liam Neeson, and Something To Talk About, it was 1997's quirky My Best Friend's Wedding that reminded audiences why they first fell in love with the Georgia Peach. Then, in 2000, came the ultimate accolade, a Best Actress statuette for her portrayal of unstoppable legal secretary Erin Brockovich in the eponymously titled flick.

Julia grew up around actors. Her father Walter (who died of cancer when the actress was ten) and mother Betty, both professional local actors, divorced when Julia was three, and though she lived with her mother and three siblings, she remained close to her father. The Notting Hill star has a well-publicised, long-running feud with her older brother, Academy Award-nominee Eric Roberts (Runaway Train).

Since coming to audiences' attention in 1988's Mystic Pizza, Julia has become something of a runaway bride. In 1993, following her failed engagements, Julia shocked the world by marrying lanky country singer Lyle Lovett. The unlikely pair divorced in June of 1995. Friends' Matthew Perry, Daniel Day-Lewis and fitness trainer Pat Manocchia also feature in the ranks of Julia's former lovers.

Her tempestuous past seemed to have calmed, however, when she took up with Law & Order's Benjamin Bratt in 1997, but in the summer of 2001, after three-and-a-half years together, the two called it quits.

Then, while working on The Mexican, in which she co-starred with Brad Pitt, Julia met Californian cameraman Danny Moder. At the time Danny was married to make-up artist Vera, but was soon spotted squiring his new love around town. He and Julia were married in an ultra-secret midnight ceremony at the actress' New Mexican ranch just outside Taos in the early hours of Independence Day 2002. The happy couple became proud parents to a boy and a girl on November 28, 2004 when Hazel Patricia and Phinnaeus Walter made their grand entrance at a Los Angeles hospital. Julia and Danny announced in early 2007 that she was expecting their third child, and Henry Daniel Moder was born on June 1

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