Her most recent hit has her starring with past co-star Richard Gere in Runaway Bride. The movie was a reunion, with actors from Pretty Woman and director, Garry Marshall. It turned out to be a box office smash earning an estimated gross of $281.6 million worldwide. Roberts played Maggie Carpenter, who gets engaged several times, but always leaves her groom standing at the altar. 

The romantic comedy involves Ike Graham (Richard Gere), a New York columnist, whose quest is to find out more about Maggie and follow her on her way to the altar, but ends up falling in love with her instead. "When [the script] was first sent to me with the note that this is something Richard liked, that in and of itself, was intriguing enough for me to stay up late on a school night and read it," explained Roberts when first reading the script for Runaway Bride, "I thought it was charming and very funny." 

In regard to Garry Marshall, Roberts said, "Garry just loves funny things, I think Garry and I are a great pair because Garry wants me to go out as far as I can possibly go with something funny or wacky or outrageous and he's very good at pushing me that way and I think I am good at saying to Garry, 'That's just way too big or that's way too much.' We're a good balance for each other, he's a good push, and I'm a good pull. And I think that in that regard, we really bring out the best in each other."

Since her divorce from her two-year marriage to songwriter and performer Lyle Lovett in March 1995, Julia has been seriously dating 36-year-old actor Benjamin Bratt since November 1997. Rumors of marriage have been circulating, but it doesn't seem to bother the actress, as she jokingly says, "What's nice about my dating life is that I don't have to leave my house. All I have to do is read the paper: I'm marrying Richard Gere, dating Daniel Day-Lewis, parading around John F. Kennedy Jr., and even Robert De Niro was in there for a day." 

Standing 5'9", the stunning actress was asked if she thought she was sexy during an interview. "Well what do you think?" she asked. When the interviewer replied, "Well I don't count," Roberts quickly responded, "Everybody counts. I've learned that. Sexy? No. Nice? Yes. I'm a nice person. I don't think I'm necessarily a sexy person. But I think nice can be sometimes more important than sexy. You know, butts drop, tits sag. Sexy is all perspective and opinion anyway. In a room of ten people, two could think one person's sexy, that eight think is a dog."

"There are people who see me at the grocery store and think that I should be like, wearing Channel or something. They can't respond to the fact that I'm in cutoffs and a T-shirt. As if it's part of my job to always look impeccable. Which isn't every gonna happen. Ever! Or like when I get off a plane, and people start taking pictures and then they write, 'Darling, find a hairdresser.' It's like, I've been on a plane for eighteen hours, sleeping. My skin is dry, my hair is a mess. What do you want from me?" explains Roberts about the hardships of maintaining a quality image even off the job. 

Roberts now resides in her duplex apartment in New York, or her house in Hollywood Hills, and a fifty-acre retreat near Taos, New Mexico. Be on the look out for her next film Erin Brockovich, a movie based on a true story directed by Steven Soderbergh. Roberts plays a twice-divorced mother of three children who joins her attorney's law firm. She stumbles upon some hidden medical records that could expose a cover-up involving contaminated water in a local community, which is causing illnesses among its residents. The movie opened on March 17,2000.