Julia Roberts Thinks the ‘Huge Passage of Time and Cultural Shifts’ Change How We See Pretty Woman 36 Years Later

Julia Roberts is looking back at Pretty Woman and thinking about how modern viewers might see it differently now.

Roberts, 58, opened up about the 1990 film in a Jan. 6 interview with Deadline. Asked if she would make Pretty Woman again today, she said, “Oh, it’s impossible. I have too many years of the weight of the world inside of me now that I wouldn’t be able to kind of levitate in a movie like that, right?”

She continued, “I mean, not weight of the world, like, negative, but just all the things that we learn, all the things that we put in our pockets along the lane. It would be impossible to play someone who was really innocent, in a way. I mean, it’s a funny thing to say about a hooker, but I do think that there was an innocence to her, a kind of… I guess it’s just being young.”

In the movie, Roberts played Vivian, a sex worker. Richard Gere’s Edward Lewis hires her to be his escort for the week and live a life of luxury. They ultimately fall in love. The movie celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2025.

Deadline asked Roberts about how perspectives on the story have changed, noting “many have stopped seeing Pretty Woman as an affectionate fairytale.”

“Well, I think anytime you have a huge passage of time and cultural shifts…” the actress said “Think about all the movies and plays of the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s — you would look at them now and just be like, ‘How are people saying these things, doing these things?’” She named Gone With the Wind as an example.

She explained, “I think these are the choices that we make as artists, as art appreciators and people that love to read books and go to the theater and yeah, times change, people change, ideas change.”

Pretty Woman was Roberts’ major breakthrough role and she received an Oscar nomination for it. She also received an Oscar nod for 1989’s Steel Magnolias. She reunited on-screen with Gere, 76, in 1999’s Runaway Bride which, like Pretty Woman, was directed by Garry Marshall.

Back in 2019, Roberts reflected on the movie in its grittier, earlier version in an interview with Patricia Arquette for Variety. Arquette confessed she had auditioned for the film when it was called 3,000 and shared that the original ending was “really heavy.”

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Roberts remembered, “Threw her out of the car, threw the money on top of her, as memory serves, and just drove away, leaving her in some dirty alley.”

“I got the part in 3,000,” Roberts said. “I love that you’re asking me this question, but I had no business being in a movie like that. This small movie company folded over the weekend, and by Monday, I didn’t have a job.”

But one producer, Disney, stayed with the script and Marshall was hired to direct it. “And because he’s a great human being, he felt it would only be fair to meet me, since I had this job for three days and lost it,” Roberts said. “And they changed the whole thing. And it became more something that is in my wheelhouse.” Of the original, grittier take, she said, “Thank God it fell apart.”