YOU exclusive interview: Julia Roberts, 'You have to be happy to be beautiful'

YOU’s Bella Blissett met the original Pretty Woman to discuss her philosophy for life and good looks – and her fabulous new project

Julia cites her own happy state of mind as one of her beauty tips

As infuriating as it sounds, Julia Roberts looks every bit the film star in real life. Yes, a few (tiny) lines have appeared since the 1990 classic Pretty Woman shot her to fame and into the treasured memories of movie lovers the world over. But the brown eyes, the ski-slope nose and the lips that have been kissed by no less than Hugh Grant (in Notting Hill), George Clooney (Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve) and Jude Law (Closer) are the same. In a world flooded with pretenders to the throne of celebrity, Julia Roberts is pure A-list. And that smile is triple A-list. Which is why it’s apt that she’s not only the face of a new scent that encapsulates happiness, but she had a hand (or nose) in its creation too. Julia worked alongside three of the world’s top perfumers, vetoing 5,520 versions until it was perfect. And I’ve travelled to Nice for the global launch of the exquisite result: Lancôme’s La Vie Est Belle.

Julia cites her own happy state of mind as one of her beauty tips. ‘I think optimism and having a sense of humour definitely help, but happiness is something you cultivate. Once you find it, that’s the key to looking beautiful. That, Lancôme eye cream and kissing!’ quips the 44-year-old actress and model, who has just flown in from the US. We’re here to celebrate the launch of this new elixir of happiness at a party so dazzling that even the most hardened of editors find themselves gawping over the champagne glasses that are constantly refilled by a small army of tuxedoed waiters.

La vie est Belle 'rained' drops of the scent

The chandelier at the launch

In the gardens of the Rothschilds’ Villa Ephrussi, we’re led down a path with the sea sparkling on one side and serried ranks of irises (the scent’s prominent note) on the other. From a pergola hangs a huge crystal chandelier that delivers great drops of the new perfume. So similar is the scene to a Julia Roberts romcom that should Rupert Everett pop out from behind the topiary it would come as no surprise. As it is, polite party protocol is immediately abandoned as 300 guests get their wrists into the path of the descending fragrance globules.

Only the sight of Julia being escorted into the dining marquee by 40 dicky-bowed men who look
as though they’ve walked off the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch advert is enough to distract us. With a little help from her travelling hairstylist, stylist, make-up artist and Giambattista Valli, who designed the grey dress she’s wearing specially for the occasion, she’s like a radiant Hollywood orb that elicits a pantomime gasp from the assembled company. 

Julia with her husband cameraman Daniel Moder

Slim but not super skinny, she tucks into the risotto starter and fish course but politely flashes that smile as she passes the raspberry and lychee pastry dessert untouched back to a hovering waiter. Aha! A fad diet, we all think, hoping to glean the secret to maintaining the kind of svelte curves of which most of us can only dream. ‘Actually, I’m not crazed about what I eat,’ she shrugs when we meet later. ‘I’m currently experimenting with a gluten-free diet, but I’m not willing to go without treats. I made gluten-free cookies and four loaves of bread for the freezer yesterday before leaving home,’ she says, showing family pictures on her iPhone. Having divorced her first husband, country singer Lyle Lovett, in 1993, she now divides her time between houses in New York, Malibu and Mexico with her cameraman husband Daniel Moder (whom she met on the set of The Mexican in 2000 and married two years later) and three children, five-year-old Henry and seven-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus.

It’s hard to imagine Ms Roberts engaging in regular domesticity, but bake, wash dishes and knit she does. ‘The last thing I made was a dress out of a massive black and white scarf that had all these cool pictures and newspaper article prints of the Rolling Stones on it,’ she says. Back home, she has her son’s favourite song ‘by a guy called Flo Rida’ blaring out during car journeys and sticks to a slick of mascara and Juicy Tubes lipgloss when she really wants to ‘blow the doors off a PTA meeting’. And she swears like a trooper several times during our interview.

‘I don’t wake up with some sense of fabulosity. I’m perfectly aware of how many people it takes to put this [movie-star appearance] on. I’m a regular person with an extraordinary job.’

And what an extraordinary job. Born in Atlanta in 1967, she moved to New York after finishing high school, signed up to acting classes and dabbled in modelling before landing her first major role in the 1988 film Mystic Pizza. Since then she’s appeared in more than 40 movies, is reported to have earned up to $20 million for some, won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in the 2000 blockbuster Erin Brockovich and has been voted the ‘world’s most beautiful woman’ by so many polls that surely her crown can in no way be disputed.

Our definition of beauty is something she was keen to explore in her recent portrayal of the Evil Queen, opposite Lily Collins’s Snow White in this year’s spin on the classic fairy tale, Mirror Mirror. ‘Snow White is an old fairy tale, so obviously the idea of vanity and obsession with youth is long-standing,’ she says. ‘With today’s science, people have become crazy with trying to move their face around. It’s bizarre.’

At a film premiere with niece Emma Roberts and sister Lisa Roberts Gillan

Enjoying a family outing with children Phinnaeus, Hazel and Henry

A sense of ‘real beauty’ is something she and the three French perfumers – Dominique Ropion, Olivier Polge and Anne Flipo – hoped to encapsulate in La Vie Est Belle. ‘During the 80s and 90s, we all became consumed with ourselves. In the 21st century, we’ve come back to simpler times. People are struggling economically and this has forced them to scale back the material aspects of their lives and realise the beauty of finding the simple joy in being with the people we love.’

In keeping with this, La Vie Est Belle – the first scent Lancôme has created from scratch for four years – is being billed as an ‘anti-recessionary’ fragrance. Containing just 63 notes (the average perfume has upwards of 120) in a simple, unbranded bottle, the emphasis is on quality of rare ingredients (such as florence iris pallida) rather than quantity. To the iris Julia added patchouli – what she describes as a ‘woodsy, sort of hippie note’ that she discovered in her 20s. 

‘Patchouli has always been a part of my fragrance, like a line through my life. I remember running into [actress] Marcia Gay Harden a few years ago after I hadn’t seen her for ages, and she said, “You still smell the same!” That made me so happy. It brought our friendship back to the day we first met. That’s the thing about smell. It lets people know that you’re somewhere nearby. Like my kids sleeping with a scarf that I’ve been wearing all day – it feels cosy.’

'Our obsession with youth is long-standing. But people have become crazy, trying to move their faces around'

Creating thousands of versions for Julia’s delectation, the perfumers finally hit upon a blend
of iris and patchouli with orange blossom and jasmine. Calling it ‘the first tasty iris’, they added a deliciously sweet mix of vanilla, tonka bean and praline that’s so moreish it’s enough to make us chandelier hoverers want to drink the drops delicately falling from its crystals.

Julia herself is also not adverse to a few of the more glam trappings that come with the life of a superstar. Her wardrobe is full of Diane von Furstenberg, vintage Ossie Clark and Stella McCartney pieces. Her Birkin handbag, she says, is her greatest indulgence (‘My husband calls it the Honda because it cost about the same amount!’). She admits to having a ‘political crush’ on President Obama (‘In a very appropriate way, people!’). She’d also like to play Albert Einstein in a movie – though not before she begins shooting her next role as Meryl Streep’s daughter in the film version of Tracy Letts’s Pulitzer winning play August: Osage County.

Ocean's Twelve with George Clooney

Pretty Woman with Richard Gere

Erin Brockovich, for which she won an Oscar

What with films, her family and now the fragrance, she certainly seems to prove the point that modern women can ‘have it all’. ‘That depends on how you define all,’ she says. ‘You can have very little from an outsider’s point of view and feel deeply fulfilled. As long as you have a sense of fulfilment in your life then you do have it all. The older you get, the more fragile you understand life to be. I think that’s good motivation for getting out of bed joyfully each day.’

Like all of us, she has her down days, but says her lifelong mantra, ‘No way out but through’, gets her through the tough times. ‘Generally, though, I’ve always been an optimistic person. Optimism and a sense of humour do come in handy with three kids!’

Back at the party, sections of the marquee wall slide sideways to reveal one-litre flacons of the new perfume in its square, beribboned bottle, before we’re ushered outside into the night. Suddenly, the words La Vie Est Belle appear in 14-foot-high lights. As fireworks crackle above them, illuminating the sky for miles around, Julia slips away, back to her most important role as wife and mother.
As to where she sees herself in ten years? ‘Fifty four f****** years old. And still a supermodel!’  

La Vie Est Belle will be available in Selfridges on Friday and selected stores nationwide from 
31 August, £56 for 50ml EDP, lancome.co.uk. The fragrance chandelier will be in Selfridges, Oxford Street, London W1, from 10-14 August and Trafford, Manchester, from 16-21 August. Go to facebook.com/LancomeExpertServices for more dates and locations. Mirror Mirror is now out on DVD

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2182609/YOU-exclusive-interview-Julia-Roberts-You-happy-beautiful.html

* * * Se você gostou do meu blog, por favor, siga-me via Google Friend Connect (canto superior direito) , via Bloglovin.***

***No Facebook e no Twitter.***

¸.•°*”˜˜”*°• ..¸.•°*”˜˜”*°•.☻/ღ˚ •。* ♥ ˚ ˚✰˚ ˛★* 。 ღ˛° 。* °♥ ˚ • ★ *˚ .ღ 。/*˛˚ღ •˚ ˚ ✰✰˚* ˚ ★/ \ ˚. ★ *˛ ˚♥* ✰。˚ ˚ღ。* ˛˚ ♥ 。✰˚* ˚ ★`⋎´✫¸.•°*”˜˜”*°•✫..✫¸.•°*”˜˜”*°•.✫