Newspaper name
San Francisco Chronicle
Date
THURSDAY, March 21, 1996
Author
``He said, `I've seen you be a psychopath, I've seen you be a sociopath, I've seen you be really stupid and funny. But I've never seen you be witty, funny and smart. Can you do it?' `Of course,' I said.''
In the film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and opens tomorrow at Bay Area theaters, Roberts' character, Nick Stark, is dying of AIDS. Knowing that his body is about to collapse, he throws a two-day farewell party for family and friends and lets everyone know that he plans to swallow some pills and go out on a high note.
It's not an obvious Eric Roberts role -- there's no ``Take your shirt off, Eric'' scene, no explosions or train wrecks or vein-popping histrionics -- and for that he's grateful.
``I would like this movie to be my screen test for the next half of my career,'' he says, ``to show people, to have them say, `Oh, that's what he can do.' I hope, I hope, but you never know, brother. It's all a crapshoot.'' Roberts, who turns 40 next month, came to Utah to promote his film at Sundance, where he spoke about ``It's My Party,'' his more famous sister Julia and his reputation as a loose cannon.
Once pretty, now rugged, his face has changed since his big-screen debut in ``King of the Gypsies'' (1978) -- worn by years of personal turmoil and drug abuse. In his words, ``I'm pretty beat-up.''
Ever since he played Paul Snider, the homicidal husband of Playboy model Dorothy Stratten in ``Star 80'' (1983), Roberts has been typecast as a thug, baboon or loony. Once Hollywood had pegged him that way, he says -- and had forgotten the fragile, complicated men he played in ``Raggedy Man,'' ``Miss Lonelyhearts'' and ``Paul's Case'' -- he quit believing that the industry would ever recognize his talent.
``I decided, `Well, f-- this, I'm going to go after quantity.' So I just started saying yes to everything. And now I've made 39 movies, 20 of which are `B' movies (``Love Is a Gun'' and ``The Lost Capone,'' for example). The industry kind of said, `OK, he's gone,' and they, like, moved on.'' The press also lost faith in him, Roberts says. ``And then everything stupid in my life, which we all have, was blown up into huge headlines.'' That includes the night, last year, when Roberts fought with his agent over the phone, yelled at his wife and took off in his car -- ignoring her pleas -- in a streak of rage.
Roberts says he drove around the block, cooled off and came back to make amends. ``But in the meantime she had dialed 911 to say, `My husband needs to be stopped.' '' The police arrived, arrested him for suspicion of spousal battery and took him to Los Angeles County Jail.
Asked if he hit his wife, Roberts says, ``No.'' When his wife of 3 1/2 years, Eliza Garrett, joins the interview a few minutes later, she corroborates his story. Asked if he hit her, she answers, ``No, he didn't.''
RIFT WITH JULIA
The press is also relentless in connecting Roberts to sister Julia, who's younger by 11 years, and speculating on the reasons for their rift. When Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett in 1993, brother Eric was conspicuously uninvited.
``It's very simple,'' Roberts says. ``I got both my sisters, Julia and Lisa, out of the South. I got them up to New York upon graduating from high school, at a time when I was a drug addict. Like all drug addicts, I thought I was doing something that I wasn't, and that's rescuing them. And what I was actually doing was bringing them into a drug addict's life.
``And, uh, it was my fault. I sacrificed their trust. But then I threatened to expose my mother for things they'd rather not ever be heard. So they rallied with my mother and decided I was more trouble than I was worth, and I can't really blame them.''
Roberts was raised in Atlanta by his father, Walter Roberts, who died when Eric was 20. His mother, Betty, left the family when he was 13, sued for custody of his two sisters (but not Eric) and settled in Smyrna, a suburb of Atlanta, where she remarried and raised Julia and Lisa. For three years, Roberts says, his sisters have shut him out of their lives. ``I've tried to contact them many times, and they ignored me. So I stopped. . . . I would like (for a reunion) to happen. And if it doesn't it's all our loss, and if it does it's all our gain.''
``It would be nice,'' his wife interjects, ``to say some of that acknowledging stuff in person, instead of just in the press. It's like e-mailing the relationship.''
Roberts says he's been clean and sober for several years and feels, at almost 40, ``like I'm finally growing up a little bit.'' He thinks he has a second chance, not only with ``It's My Party,'' which won a standing ovation at Sundance, but with ``Dark Angel,'' an upcoming detective series for Fox television set in New Orleans.
Roberts admits that Nick, his character in ``It's My Party,'' didn't come naturally to him. ``He didn't fall in my lap. I had to work at him, because he's smarter than me, funnier than me and has much different talents.
He was not really out of my back yard, so I had to find him.''
HELP WITH ROLE
Help came, he says, from writer/director Randal Kleiser, who based the film on his own situation with an ex-lover who died of AIDS; from producer Thurm, who's gay and an old friend of Roberts'; and from Gregory Harrison (``Trapper John, M.D.''), who plays Brandon, the estranged lover (based on Kleiser), who re-enters the picture when he hears Nick is dying.
From their first day together, Roberts says, ``Greg and I just were crazy for each other. We liked each other's wives, we like each other's clothes, cars, stuff we eat. We had a lot in common instantly, and we just liked each other. And it made it so easy to, like, basically fall in love with the guy.
``I joke around and say, `I will always call him my boyfriend.' But I love Greg, I really do. I mean, it was really cool.''
Eric Roberts and a canine companion in a scene from the new drama `It's My Party'