Emma Roberts is aware of the downsides to stardom, especially after seeing how much attention her aunt Julia Roberts received as a Hollywood A-lister.
“I saw very up close what that really looks like with my aunt Julia,” Emma, 33, responded when asked by Bruce Bozzi whether becoming a “massive movie star” was ever her goal as an actress. “It’s fun and it’s great, but there is a part of it that’s really scary.”
Emma explained on the Tuesday, June 25, episode of the “Table for Two” podcast that she “always wanted to kind of carve my own path.”
She noted that through Julia’s superstardom, she learned early on that fame isn’t always a good thing. “Fame has never been the goal, because fame at a certain level is kind of scary,” Emma added.
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Julia, 56, made her big screen debut in 1988’s Satisfaction, which she followed up with Mystic Pizza that same year. She was nominated for her first Oscar in 1990 for her role in Steel Magnolias. A decade later, Julia won the 2001 Academy Award for best actress in a leading role for Erin Brockovich.
Julia has remained a box-office success in the decades that have followed. However, acting has never been the only thing that drives her.
“Acting is my dream come true, but it is not my only dream come true,” Julia told CBS News Sunday Morning in October 2022. “The life that I’ve built with my husband [Danny Moder and] the life that we’ve built with our children [Hazel, Phinnaeus and Henry]. That’s the best stuff, to come home at the end of the day triumphantly to them.”
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Emma has had a similar approach to her career, which began in the early 2000s. The actress started out as a TV star thanks to Nickelodeon’s Unfabulous. She has since starred on Scream Queens and American Horror Story in addition to movie projects like 2024’s Madame Web.
“Even in my later teens, I was like, I never want my fame to outweigh my work,” Emma shared on Tuesday. “Because there’s nothing scarier to me than being so famous that you’re never left alone, but also you’re not getting good jobs.”
Like her aunt, Emma has had to navigate being a mother and an actress after welcoming her son, Rhodes, in December 2020. (Emma shares her toddler with ex Garrett Hedlund.)
“I’m loving it. I feel so lucky. I just got to finish work on a show, I get to go see my 3-year-old tomorrow,” Emma gushed to Entertainment Tonight in January after wrapping season 12 of American Horror Story. “Life is good. I’m very grateful.”
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While Emma comes from a line of actors — her father, Eric Roberts, is also in the industry — she revealed on Tuesday that being a nepo baby isn’t always a positive.
“I think there’s two sides of the coin. People like to say, you know, you have a leg up because you have family in the industry,” she explained on the podcast. “But then the other side to that is you have to prove yourself more. Also, if people don’t have good experiences with other people in your family, then you’ll never get a chance.”
Emma added that she thinks “young girls get it harder with the nepo baby thing,” noting that George Clooney — whose aunt Rosemary Clooney was an actress and singer and whose father, Nick Clooney, is an anchorman — never seemed to get heat for his connections.
Emma concluded by saying, “I don’t think anyone should be called out for wanting to follow their dream.”
