What Money Can't Buy

Thursday August 16, 2001 01:20 PM EDT

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Yahoo Buzz
• E-mail

Julia Roberts was in fine form. Walking the red carpet for the L.A. premiere of America's Sweethearts last month, she was radiant in a sheer gold top, strappy sandals, a flirtatious toe ring -- and the kind of wide-screen grin only the woman TIME declared America's Best Movie Star can muster. She gave hello hugs to costars John Cusack, Billy Crystal and, finally, Catherine Zeta-Jones, who locked her in a tight embrace as they rocked back and forth. While cameras flashed, Mrs. Michael Douglas leaned in for a second's girl talk. "How are you?" she whispered. Roberts pulled back, grinned, and quietly responded, "I'm great." But Zeta-Jones wasn't having it. "No -- how are you?" she persisted. Roberts looked at her again, apparently just getting the question behind the question: How are you now that your it-all-seemed-so-perfect four-year romance with Benjamin Bratt just collapsed in smoke and ashes?

Photographers closed in before Roberts, 33, could respond. But the $20 million-per-film, Oscar-winning addition to the dating game had effectively given her answer two weeks earlier on the Late Show with David Letterman, revealing to the host the never-complain-never-explain line she has been practicing in front of her mirror lately: "Hi. I'm Julia. I'm single. Doesn't make me a bad person."

The next Mr. Lucky probably won't need that assurance before jotting her phone number down on a cocktail napkin. And, yes, it's unlikely that Roberts -- as well as recently single stars Meg Ryan and Nicole Kidman -- would have to do more to get a date than approve applications. But while power, fame, money and sex appeal are a powerful quartet, they don't always lead to romantic harmony. And though it might be hard, in a world full of lonely hearts, to feel sympathy for a few superstars who just made life more difficult for everyone else, things are tough all over. "Being a star brings its own set of problems and baggage," a close friend says of Ryan, 39. "Men don't seek her out. Friends of mine will say, 'So-and-so would like to go out with her, but he doesn't have the (glandular fortitude).' These girls are not stupid -- you have to have a really secure guy. They don't just fall off trees."

1. Previous
2. 1
3. 2
4. 3
5. Next