With Fairly Lady, Notting Hill, and My Greatest Pal’s Wedding ceremony, Julia Roberts has starred in among the finest romantic comedies of all time. However as destiny would have it, she might have added one other to her spectacular roster: 1998’s You’ve Acquired Mail, reverse Tom Hanks.
Whereas selling her newest movie, the psychological thriller Depart the World Behind, on Thursday’s episode of Watch What Occurs Reside with Andy Cohen, Roberts was requested to mirror on any roles she regretted turning down. As an alternative, the Oscar winner shifted the query to share two films she handed on that “perhaps wouldn’t have been as nice and great” together with her in them.
One was 1992’s The Final of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. The opposite? Meg Ryan’s half as hopelessly romantic bookshop proprietor Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Acquired Mail. As an alternative of Roberts, who went on to star with Hanks in 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s Conflict and 2011’s Larry Crowne, Ryan reunited together with her Sleepless in Seattle love curiosity. That very same yr, Roberts opted to co-headline the home tearjerker Stepmom alongside Susan Sarandon.
Practically a decade prior, it was Ryan who was initially solid in 1989’s Metal Magnolias within the function of Shelby, who is predicated on screenwriter and playwright Robert Harling’s sister, Susan. “The day after we solid her, she got here to us in tears and stated, ‘I’m sorry, however I simply acquired supplied this movie, and I’ll be a number one woman with Billy Crystal…’” Harling recalled final yr, “so you already know we stated, after all, go make When Harry Met Sally.”
It was Sally Subject, who performs Shelby’s mom M’Lynn within the movie, who urged producers meet with Roberts, in line with Harling. “Sally stated, ‘you already know there’s this lady and she or he’s been off making some film a few pizza. She’s Eric Roberts’s sister,” he instructed Southern Dwelling, referencing her breakout function in 1988’s Mystic Pizza. “We introduced her in, and she or he was Julia Roberts, so she was magic. She simply walked into the room and lit it up, and I believed, that’s my sister.”
Roberts additionally talked about the Metal Magnolias change, which helped earn her the primary of 4 Academy Award nominations, on WWHL. She famous that she additionally almost missed out on her earliest challenge with the late filmmaker Mike Nichols. “Cate Blanchett was alleged to be in Nearer, however she acquired pregnant, so then I acquired that half,” Roberts stated of the 2004 romantic thriller co-starring Natalie Portman, Jude Legislation, and Clive Owen. “So, I’ve lucked into some great things.”
