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3. Steel Magnolias (1989)

In the more traditional vein, we have one of Julia’s first movies, the one that immediately preceded her biggest role ever in Pretty Woman. While it is true that I kept Ocean’s Eleven off the list because the cast was so plentiful as to opaque here, the cast in Steel Magnolias, as grand and as talented as it is, somehow leaves room for Julia to magically shine (so much so that she landed a Golden Globe for her turn).

Undoubtedly you know that in this dramedy she plays Shelby Eatenton, a southern belle stricken by diabetes and fated for a dark end. You know, too, that screen greats from Sally Field to Olivia Dukakis and Shirley MacLaine make this one of the most iconic female dramas of all time. But the truly surprising element of the movie is the relative newcomer, who plays the doomed Shelby with the great big heart that would come to characterize her as a star and as a character.

Shelby (spoilers) succumbs to her illness after delivering a child, causing sadness and grief that is worthy of any moment from the obviously similar Terms of Endearment (proving, once more, that Roberts’ films are all but original). Before that happens, however, Roberts nails the southern accent, and provides hope to the older generation. She would do that to the younger as time went on as well.

2. Erin Brockovich (2000)

Roberts famously landed the Oscar she so-coveted for playing the title character in Steven Sodebergh’s other big movie in 2000, Erin Brockovich.

One of the few times that Roberts has played a real life character, she conducted herself with aplomb and grit in bringing to the screen a larger-than-life personality that was not easy to nail. But nail it she did. A deft mix between funny and serious, Roberts provides the best deadpans and sarcasms of her career as she portrays the fiery assistant turned litigator who helps a group of people mired in tragedy over a local plants pollution of their lands.

What starts as a mostly tongue-in-cheek role soon turns deadly serious, and Roberts perfectly navigates the emotional ups and downs of both her own struggles and those of the people she’s become so devoted to represent. Sure, the plotline is somewhat predictable in its climaxes and anti-climaxes, but any key, non-predictable scene belongs to Roberts and her unpredictable character, whom she ends up embodying wholly.

In the end, of the many Roberts movies one can look through, this one is arguably also the most original (unless one counts John Travolta’s A Civil Action I guess - never mind). And, her Oscar speech was one of the most endearing and heartfelt in a while, back then.

1. My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)

But if we have been speaking of clichéd movies all day long, we may as well close it out with a big bang.

After a relative down period following the astronomical success of Pretty Woman, Roberts found herself squarely back as phenomenon in the spotlight with the wildly successful My Best Friend’s Wedding.

The movie is somewhat funny and dated today, living right at the cusp of that time when gay characters began to appear more regularly in movies, and right at the cusp of Roberts’ transition to pretty young thing to respected young woman. The story, of course, focuses on Julianne Potter, who has a lifelong male best friend (from the beginning, the movie is high on realism, right?), who she know begrudges to hear is going to marry a ditsy young girl, Kimmy (the memorably whiny Cameron Diaz).

At first in denial, Julianne realizes she’s been secretly in love with her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney), and hatches a contrived plot with her stereotyped gay friend (Rupert Everett) to get him back. Hilarity does ensue, including an amazing chase scene sparked by Kimmy discovering Julianne and Michael in an embrace, as well as many skits that may have influenced and inspired Bride Wars. Then, feelings are predictably broken and mended, with Julia delivering one of the most memorable lines of her career: “I’m just a girl…standing in front of a boy…asking him to love her.” (NB: I know, of course, that the memorable line is really from Notting Hill, but no one would blame you for collapsing the two scenes, delivered in nearby years, of Julia asking a boy to love her, even though in My Best Friend’s Wedding she did it under the wedding gazebo).

It’s not every day that an uber successful actress makes the audience feel genuinely sad for her (certainly the contrived offense scenes in Pretty Woman don’t do the trick even if Shelby’s death in Magnolias does), but Roberts portrays the begging under the gazebo scene with such genuine and, if you allow me, pathetic emotion, that you’re squarely on her side despite the fact that she’s clearly an unabashed homewrecker in the movie.

In the end, of course, Julianne does not get the boy—the right outcome, and the one that allows me to finally say with conviction that, at the very least, this is one of Julia’s most original movies ever, at least for a rom com.

Julia, then, may not have decades of awe-inspiring acting turns, but she has run the gamut from inspirational, to emotional, to serious and thrilling, while remaining mostly comedic and romantic. Few actresess have, like her, achieved that vaunted position as a true American Sweetheart, the quintessential American movie star.

A Money Monster, if you will.

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