Julia Roberts on Fighting Meryl: 'She's Strong!'

Dishes on social media, Oscars with 'Marie Claire'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 12, 2013 10:58 AM CST

One of the perks of being a famous actress: You get to brawl with Meryl Streep. In a scene from the upcoming August: Osage County film, Julia Roberts knocks Streep, who plays her mother, to the ground. "I tell you, Meryl's strong!" Roberts tells Marie Claire. "And I could not get the pills [her character is trying to grab pills from Streep] out of her hand. I'm just thankful I didn't hurt her." The two ended up sending a picture of the scene (which took three days to film) to director Mike Nichols, a mutual friend; the photo showed "me choking her, like fighting over him," Roberts says. More from the interview:

  • Why she stays off social media: "It's kind of like cotton candy: It looks so appealing and you just can't resist getting in there, and then you just end up with sticky fingers and it lasted an instant."
  • Why she never Googles herself: "I have too much potential for collapse. There's an anonymity that makes people feel safe to participate in hatefulness. I like a good old-fashioned fistfight if people are pissed off at each other. I just feel like if you're really mad and want to have a fight, then put your dukes up."
  • On her Academy Award chances: "Listen, every actor wants to win an Oscar, full stop. It doesn't mean you try to design things around how to accomplish that because that's impossible. Now that I'm a grown-up person and have things of such greater value to pin my idea of joy and fullness on, if something like that were to happen again, my feeling of thrill would be defined in a completely different way."
Click for the full interview. (More Julia Roberts stories.)

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