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Julia Roberts bags top actress Oscar 
LOS ANGELES: Julia Roberts has been America's Pretty
Woman since shooting to overnight stardom in 1990 but
she had to wait until Sunday to claim Hollywood's highest
honors.
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SITTING
PRETTY: A proud Roberts displays her Awards backstage
after the ceremony. (Reuters)
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Giggling and laughing with pleasure, Roberts accepted
her best actress Oscar for Erin Brockovich with the
blinding smile and infectious enthusiasm that have wowed
audiences for years and made her the industry's most
bankable female star.
"Wow.
I love it up here," she whooped, thanking "everyone
I've ever met in my life".
Looking
every inch the poised star with upswept hair and wearing
a vintage Valentino black velvet gown, Roberts revealed
the girl still plagued by insecurities about her talent
and her looks when she thanked Erin Brockovich director
Steven Soderbergh.
"You
truly made me want to be the best actor that I suppose
I never knew I could be, or aspire to be," the
33-year-old actress said.
"I'm
so happy. I'm going to spend some time here to tell
you some things .. And sir," she said to the man
signaling when winners should end their speeches, "You're
doing a great job with that stick but why don't you
sit, because I may never be here again."
Roberts'
flair for romantic comedy has brought her some of the
biggest box office hits of the last decade—Notting
Hill, Runaway Bride, Sleeping with the Enemy and of
course Pretty Woman.
But
it took a change of style and genre for her to win an
Oscar. Playing the real-life single mom Erin Brockovich,
she switched her trademark flowery dresses and winsome
ways for a gutsy, battling legal assistant with a penchant
for push-up bras, mini-skirts and a loud mouth
Roberts
had already won a clutch of awards including the Golden
Globe, Screen Actors Guild and British BAFTA trophies
for her role in Brockovich, which is based on the true
story of a single mom spearheading a lawsuit against
a utility that dumped toxic waste near a small southern
California town.
Her
victory on Sunday was about the only predictable award
on a night of Oscar surprises, and she took time to
praise her best actress rivals Juliette Binoche, Ellen
Burstyn, Joan Allen and Laura Linney.
"It's
just felt like such a triumph for me to be in that list,"
Roberts said.
Roberts'
own, sometimes stumbling, search for love has kept her
under a celebrity microscope even during the occasional
lean period in her career.
She
canceled her 1991 wedding to actor Kiefer Sutherland
just days before the ceremony, ended her 1993 marriage
to country singer Lyle Lovett ended just 21 months later,
and she has been romantically linked with leading men
ranging from Matthew Perry to Liam Neeson.
"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
with John Kennedy Jr. and even Robert De Niro was in
there for a day," Roberts quipped a few years ago.
For
the past three years however, she has been dating actor
Benjamin Bratt, who looked on proudly on Sunday as Roberts
made the most of her moment in the limelight.
"I
love the world. I'm so happy. Thank you," she gushed.
Her
next movie, appropriately, is America's Sweethearts.
Reuters
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