the actress reasserted her position as both America's sweetheart and a box-office winner with her starring role in the hit comedy, "My Best Friend's Wedding." Cast as a scheming restaurant critic who sets out to break up the wedding of the man she thinks she loves, Roberts turned what could have become an unsympathetic character into an audience favorite through the sheer force of her natural charm and vibrancy. She was abetted by Rupert Everett's scene-stealing supporting turn as her gay editor and a subtle script by Ron Bass that inverted many of the clichés of screwball comedy. In contrast, Roberts' much-anticipated teaming with Mel Gibson in Richard Donner's "Conspiracy Theory" (1997) proved to be somewhat disappointing, thanks to a muddled script. Ron Bass was one of several writers who worked on the script of "Stepmom" (1998), a comedy-drama that cast Roberts as the much younger girlfriend of a divorced man coping with his two children and his saintly ex-wife (Susan Sarandon).

Roberts followed with a turn as a world-famous movie star who falls in love with a bumbling British bookseller (Hugh Grant) in "Notting Hill" (1999), an uneven romantic comedy that nevertheless did extremely well at the box office. The much ballyho d reunion with Richard Gere under Garry Marshall's guidance in "Runaway Bride" (1999) brought out the crowds, but the film could in no way compete with the "Pretty Woman" legacy that came before. Just as critics thought she was all charm and no real acting chops, Roberts took on the role of her life, essaying the real-life legal secretary who assisted in turning a water poisoning case into one of the largest class-action lawsuits in U.S. history, in "Erin Brockovich" (2000). In perhaps the best performance of her career, Roberts was in top form, thanks in part to the direction of Steven Soderbergh. Roberts earned just about every accolade in 2001, including an Academy Award for Best Actress.

After such a heavy project, Roberts made a welcome return to comedy, playing the frustrated girlfriend of a low-level, somewhat bumbling gangster (Brad Pitt) in the "The Mexican" (2001). Although she and Pitt were not on screen together for very long, the pair shared an easy chemistry, though she had better rapport with James Gandolfini as the hit man who kidnaps her as insurance. Despite fielding many offers and after already playing a movie star on screen, Roberts opted this time to play the personal assistant to the movie star (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in the disastrous, critically reviled comedy, "America's Sweethearts" (2001). Roberts teamed up again with Soderbergh for a small role in his remake of "Ocean's Eleven" (2001). Playing Tess Ocean, George Clooney's perpetually disappointed wife, Roberts did her best to keep up with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia. Robert's next project was also with Soderbergh, in "Full Frontal" (2002), the non-narrative sequel to his first film, "Sex, Lies and Videotape" (1989). Roberts' character, wearing an extremely unattractive hairdo, was shockingly uninteresting and unimportant to the story - such as it was.

Thanks to her collaborations with Soderbergh, Roberts was the only female member of a new Brat Pack crowd of actors that included Clooney, Pitt, Damon and Don Cheadle. She joined Clooney for his directorial debut, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" (2002), the life story of game show producer and host, Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), who supposedly led a double life as a CIA hit man. Roberts delivered a game performance as a spy femme fatale who tries to ensnare Barris into a web of deceit. Roberts settled into more standard fare with "Mona Lisa Smile" (2003), playing Katherine Watson, a liberal-minded educator who takes a feminist position at Wellesley in the 1950s and quickly comes under fire for teaching her female students to aspire to something other than marriage and kids. While the film's premise and storyline - a female spin on the familiar "Dead P ts' Society" model - was predictable, Roberts' delivered a mature and engaging performance that in ways different from her previous efforts had audiences once again rooting for her.

Just as Roberts began filming the anticipated sequel "Ocean's Twelve" (2004), the actress, who was by then onto her second marriage to cameraman Danny Moder, announced to the world that she was pregnant with twins. Perhaps due to the impending birth, Roberts appeared to be having more fun than in the first "Oceans," gamely playing off of her pregnancy and - in a harder-to-swallow plot spin - her character's uncanny resemblance to movie star Julia Roberts. Just prior to the release of that film, Roberts made international headlines when she gave birth to a boy and a girl, Phinnaeus and Hazel, in November 2004. Hot on the heels of that arrival was the debut of the Mike Nichols-directed drama "Closer" (2004), in which she played an American photographer in London caught up in the heated, sometimes erotic, often cruel love/sex gender war amid two shifting sets of couples (Jude Law and Natalie Portman; Roberts and Clive Owen). The highly literate film received excellent reviews and brought Roberts' her best notices since "Erin Brockovich."