She could have taken the trouble to look better and younger without anything that you’d call cheating. But she plays a photographer, a woman who believes in the naked moments of the human face, and who has given up on subterfuges for herself. It is an ensemble film, in which individual performances may not be picked out – and if they are, why Natalie Portman’s success is the more spectacular, and the most tied to nude scenes and moments of sexual candour. But hearing Julia Roberts talk directly about sex is not just refreshing, it’s startling enough to reveal how much of a tease her career has been so far.I hope that won’t deter her. She has never been better or been involved in a more absorbing picture. But it’s also true that many actresses resist 40, deny it, and try to stay young. And those cheating ways are as quickly palpable as youth itself and a body that still has few worries about staying taut.The most admirable thing about Julia Roberts in Closer is the willingness to play it without a safety net.

Response: the public never saw it.) Often enough – above all in Notting Hill – being Julia was sufficient.Yet any actress knows that happy era is short-lived. The mirror does take its revenge; and actresses bewail the shortage of parts for women past 40 There’s justice in that complaint. The movie audience does not much enjoy complaining women, those beset by loss and insecurity. The kids going to movies want the perfection of advertisements, and that’s surely one reason why they divorce each other so often. In other words, her performances deal in attractiveness, youth and charm. Often enough, from Pretty Woman to Erin Brockovich, but above all in Mary Reilly, Julia Roberts gave ample evidence that she could act.

(Mary Reilly, by Stephen Frears, written by Christopher Hampton, with John Malkovich as Dr Jekyll and Julia as his housemaid, is a very fine film, and the one effort in which Julia had said, well, I won’t be pretty. Clive Owen, in probably the hardest or most vulnerable part, is so good that I would immediately mount a season of Pinter plays with him in the leads. And then there is Julia Roberts, looking older and sadder than 37, wearing very little make-up in the searching white light, living with her own faults and weaknesses, and giving a flawless performance of rotten adulthood.More or less, for 15 years or so, Julia Roberts worked on beauty, charm and the way in which, if in doubt, she would just smile. This has not been a good year for an actor who seemed not long ago to be crammed with promise. The re-make of Alfie (with Law in nearly every shot and talking all the time) was not just awful but a ruinous exposure of his charm. He lacks confidence, and the more you see of him the more it nags I Heart Huckabees is silly and pretentious.