Julia Roberts to Make Broadway Debut

By Devon Thomas

07/29/2005 at 05:00 PM EDT

Julia Roberts is preparing to make her return to acting by doing something she's never done before: starring on Broadway.

The 37-year-old Erin Brockovich actress plans to make her debut in a revival of Richard Greenberg's three-person play, Three Days of Rain, the New York Times reports Friday. This will be her first major acting gig since giving birth to twins late last year.

The production will begin a 12-week limited engagement next March at a theater yet to be named, and will be directed by Joe Mantello, one of Broadway's most sought-after directors. No other details, including other cast members, were announced.

Roberts's foray into theater is the fulfillment of a dream for the Oscar winner whose career in Hollywood spans nearly two decades. "By the time I get there, I'll be entirely apoplectic," Roberts told the Times Thursday in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "But the terror is part of the excitement."

The play – like Roberts herself – has never been seen on Broadway. Played in two acts set 35 years apart, Three Days of Rain is structured in two parts: The actors play the children in the first act and the parents in the second, a duality which appealed to Roberts as soon as she read the play.

"I love its complications," she said. "I love the opportunity to get to play someone in contemporary times and then play the mother 30 years earlier."

Playing mom is role that's become familiar to Roberts since giving birth to twins Phinnaeus and Hazel this past November, with her husband, cameraman Danny Moder, 36. As she told W earlier this year: "I think that it is safe to say now that I am fully and completely a grown-up."