The one genre Julia Roberts wants absolutely nothing to do with: “Off the table for me”
Rom-com queen Julia Roberts has been a vital part of Hollywood since the late 1980s – even if her latest projects haven’t been half as memorable as her appearances in movies like Pretty Woman and Notting Hill. Yet, the beloved world of meet cutes and heart-wrenchingly romantic declarations of love would be nothing without Roberts, whose roles in many iconic movies have paved the way for the genre.
Of course, Roberts has done more than just rom-coms, having entered the world of fantasy with Hook, doing heist comedy in Ocean’s Eleven (and Twelve), and even winning an Oscar for her powerful performance in Steven Soderbergh’s legal drama Erin Brockovich. So, while she is best known for playing charming characters, often thrust into complex romantic entanglements, Roberts seems able to do anything you throw in front of her, whether that be a thriller or an animated kids’ movie.
There is one genre that Roberts won’t do, however, no matter how hard you convince her. “You know everybody divides the world into two groups? My two groups are people that like to be scared and people who don’t like to be scared,” the actor explained to Entertainment Weekly. It seems like we won’t be seeing Roberts in a horror movie anytime soon.
To be fair, the actor has come close to the genre with a few thrillers and the gothic horror movie Mary Reilly from 1996, but it wasn’t exactly the scariest film in the world. Directed by Stephen Frears, who is better known for movies like Dangerous Liaisons and High Fidelity, it certainly proved that no one involved in making the film was much of a horror expert. Roberts definitely wasn’t, and she ended up nominated for a Razzie as a result.
Roberts made her stance on abstaining from horror movies pretty clear in that Entertainment Weekly interview, revealing that she had to tell her good friend Ryan Murphy that she wouldn’t be going anywhere near his hugely popular television series American Horror Story, either as a viewer or an actor.
“The first season of American Horror Story came out and the way that I took my kids to school then, there was a traffic light that I always hit red and there was a poster for American Horror Story right at that traffic light,” she added. “I called Ryan and I said, ‘I’m just going to tell you right now — I don’t think I can watch your show. I can’t support you. I don’t think I can do it.’ He goes, ‘Lady, you won’t get through the commercial.’ Okay, that’s a good friend. Someone who really knows me and so of course I would never watch that.”
The actor’s own niece, Emma Roberts, played a prominent part in AHS, which has seen grisly tales of murder, possession, cults, and freak shows play out across 12 seasons (with another set to be released in the future).
However, she couldn’t even sit down to watch the series for the sake of her family member, adding, “And then Emma’s on it and I say, ‘Emma, sweetheart, I don’t think I can watch this show that you’re in.’ And she goes, ‘Auntie, I was in this toy box at the end of this bed and they pulled my arm off.’ I go, ‘Okay. You just have to stop talking. I can’t handle it.’ So that is off the table for me. I don’t watch things like that.”
