Eric Roberts, the elder brother of the beloved Julia Roberts, isn’t afraid to publicly critique one of his sister’s most profound performances.
“Julia was good in ‘Mystic Pizza,’ great in ‘Pretty Woman,’ but not so much in ‘Steel Magnolias,’ in my opinion, even though it brought Julia her first Academy Award nomination,” he wrote in his memoir out now, “Runaway Train: Or, The Story of My Life So Far,” per Entertainment Weekly.
“I don’t want to sound like an actor talking, or a jealous sibling, but I don’t think her performance held up in that movie. When I saw her in ‘Steel Magnolias,’ I thought, ‘Okay. Good. She’s almost a good actor, and one day she’s gonna be one,’” Eric wrote.
ERIC ROBERTS OFFERS ‘PUBLIC APOLOGY’ TO SISTER JULIA ROBERTS
“In fact, I think all those brilliant women – Sally Fields [sic], Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah – overacted their asses off in ‘Steel Magnolias,'” he continued. “Nobody’s great in that movie. They all chewed a lot of scenery, and we know that if an actor cries on film, they go to the top of the class. They get the Oscar nod because crying gets a lot of credit. It’s the big joke in all acting classes, even in the great Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. Crying and dying bring home the bacon!”
Brenda Fricker ended up beating Julia for best supporting actress at the Oscars in 1990, for her performance in “My Left Foot.”
Eric continued to qualify his sister’s nomination, saying her “Southern charm” contributed. “I also think another reason she got an Oscar nod for ‘Steel Magnolias’ was her authenticity as a sweet, small-town Southern girl,” he wrote. “That’s what she was, after all, or at least that’s how she started off. I don’t know if she had a dialect coach try to eradicate her Southern accent, but if so, luckily for her it didn’t take.”
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“I think that’s a big part of her appeal – along with her boffo good looks and killer smile – her Southern accent and mannerisms,” he added. “Beauty like that can be off-putting, especially for other women, but Julia’s down-home manner made her seem like your best friend. There’s a certain colorful and enchanting quality to Southern speech.”
Eric insisted in his memoir that he was “not really” jealous of Julia, particularly because they never auditioned for the same roles. He can admit, however, that he felt his presence in Hollywood shrinking as Julia’s enlarged.
“When suddenly this rare and rarefied thing occurred, this worldwide phenomenon of Julia’s stardom, it shoved me into the public eye in a different way,” he wrote.
“First, there were all kinds of suspicions cast upon us – even outlandish and creepy rumors of incest. I don’t exactly know where that started,” he said. “It could have been a dumb idea of what Southerners were capable of – a mean-spirited swipe at the South. But beyond that, it seemed as if there wasn’t room in the public imagination for both Julia and me – that we were in competition with each other.”
The Roberts’ family is from a small suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.
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Although he wasn’t jealous of his sister, he didn’t necessarily voice his support.
“When you rule the world, which she kind of did for a while, and a member of your family is slow to acknowledge that, you hold it against them,” he wrote of not immediately acknowledging her success. “I never paid enough homage to her. I still saw her as my baby sister, and I knew that she – like me – came from white trash, yet she became one of the biggest stars that ever breathed. And she knew it, bless her heart. What a trajectory!”
Eric’s relationship with Julia remains unclear – in 2018, he infamously told Vanity Fair that he had paved the way for both Julia and his daughter, actress Emma Roberts. “If it wasn’t for me, there would be no Julia Roberts and no Emma Roberts as celebrities, as actresses, and I’m very proud of that,” he said then.
According to an excerpt of his book obtained by People magazine, Eric apologizes for that remark. “I hope Julia will accept this public apology. It was an asinine thing to have said.”
Representatives for both Eric and Julia Roberts did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
