Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts won the Academy Award for best actress for Steven Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich. She plays a twice-divorced mother of three who elbows her way into a small law firm as a clerk and works a case against a large utility accused of exposing people living near one of its plants to dangerous amounts of toxic chromium. The Sight and Sound piece reads the performance as a striking return to form: after Stepmom and Notting Hill it rebuilds her gift for nuance, and under the character's aggression it finds a wish to be passionately attached to working life. Pretty Woman, Steel Magnolias and August: Osage County are here as well. Before Pretty Woman she had been nominated for the Independent Spirit award for best female lead for Mystic Pizza, from 1988.