• Hollywood actress
• Pro-Democrat activist
• Claims that global warming is caused by industrial and automotive pollution 

Julia Roberts is an Oscar-winning actress and one of the highest-paid performers in Hollywood. She is also a vocal critic of Republicans and a firm believer that “global warming” caused by human industrial activity threatens the welfare of the planet.

Roberts was born on October 28, 1967 in Smyrna, Georgia.  She was raised in an acting family; her older brother Eric actually broke into show business before her. Julia moved to New York after high school and never attended college. Regarding her decision to forgo higher education, Roberts says: “I couldn’t see bolting out of bed at 8 a.m. to be ten minutes late for some f***ing class with some f***ing guy who’s just gonna stick it to me again.”

After appearing in a few relatively obscure movies, Roberts in 1989 was in the picture Steel Magnolias, for which she garnered her first Oscar nomination. The following year, she played the role of a prostitute in the box-office hit, Pretty Woman. She also has had starring roles in romantic comedies like My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Notting Hill (1999), and America’s Sweethearts (2001), and in dramas like Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), Conspiracy Theory (1997), Erin Brockovich (2000), Mona Lisa Smile (2003), and Charlie Wilson’s War (2007). For her work in some of these films, she earned upwards of $20 million apiece.

Roberts has made the cover of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” issue three times, and has been included on that list nine times.

In 2001 Roberts made news by accusing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of racism for not giving Denzel Washington an Oscar Award for “Best Actor.” “He [Washington] should be on his third Oscar by now, and that might not be enough,” she told Newsweek. “I mean did you see Malcolm f***ing X and Hurricane and Philadelphia?... I cannot absorb living in a world where I have an Oscar for best actress and Denzel doesn’t have one for best actor.”

On June 9, 1999, Roberts signed on to a full-page USA Today ad by Handgun Control, Inc.  This “Open Letter to the National Rifle Association” demanded the implementation of a number of gun-control measures, including mandatory child-safety locks, background checks, and 72-hour waiting periods for all handgun purchases. Among the other notable signatories to the ad were Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand, Phil Donahue, Candice Bergen, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, and Walter Cronkite.

On September 14, 2000 in New York, Roberts served as a celebrity emcee -- along with Harvey Weinstein, Matt Damon and Michael Douglas -- for a fundraising gala on behalf of that year's Democratic presidential ticket, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. Addressing the crowd, Roberts said, "'Republican' comes in the dictionary just after 'reptile' and just above 'repugnant.'" She added that when she looked up the word "Democrat" in the dictionary, she learned that the party was defined as being "of the people, by the people, for the people." Roberts helped the Democratic ticket take in more than $6.5 million at this fundraiser.

In March 2001, four months after George W. Bush had been elected President, Roberts said that he “is embarrassing; he is not my president; he will never be my president.” In June 2001 Roberts, musing on allegations that Bush’s twin daughters occasionally drank alcohol, said: “We all need to take a deep breath and think about being a Bush daughter and having that cross to bear. I’d go out and have a couple of drinks too.”

In 2006 Roberts appeared -- along with Robert F. Kennedy, George Clooney, and Al Gore -- on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine’s “Special Green Issue,” beneath the headline: “A Threat Greater than Terrorism: Global Warming.”

That same year, Roberts was a spokeswoman for a campaign by the Dallas-based company Earth Biofuels, to encourage the use of biodiesel in more than 500,000 school buses nationwide. Said Roberts, “The use of biodiesel is a positive step toward minimizing pollutive emissions and greenhouse gases. By focusing on school buses, we can affect the health and well-being of the people most susceptible to that pollution -- our children -- today.”

“I absolutely believe I am in the majority of people who are concerned about the environment and the state of our planet,” Roberts’ wrote in the forward for Sophie Uliano’s 2008 book Gorgeously Green: 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life. “Mother Earth has seen better days.”

In December 2007 Variety magazine interviewed Roberts and reported that she has "a desire to be an organic supermom who grows and makes all of her own food and does as many crafts as she can fit into a day with as little impact on the environment as possible." But in practice, Roberts drives a gas-guzzling Mercedes SUV.