Julia Roberts on her ‘complicated and challenging’ ‘After the Hunt’ role

Julia Roberts is a college professor at a personal and professional crossroads in Luca Guadagnino‘s latest film, After the Hunt.

The film, which arrives in theaters on Friday, also stars Ayo Edebiri as a star philosophy college student and Andrew Garfield as a fellow professor at Yale University.

Roberts participated in a press conference about the film, where she said she was first drawn to the project by the prospect of working with Guadagnino.

“It’s so fun getting to be in the orbit of someone who’s so interested in people, and curious and in love with why we do the things we do or don’t,” Roberts said of the director.

The actress said that her character, professor Alma Imhoff, “was so foreign and complicated and challenging to me,” but Guadagnino helped her get through her initial fears of taking the role on.

“He made me feel so excited at the possibilities of this kind of portrayal, but deeply encouraged and supported and just was believing in me before I even knew what we were doing,” Roberts said.

When asked about how she has seen the role of women evolve on screen over the course of her career, Roberts took pause and considered before answering.

“It’s funny, because people do try to talk a lot about the evolution of women in film. Nobody ever talks about the evolution, or de-evolution, of men in film,” Roberts said. “I guess I get a little harrumphy about it because I don’t really know what it means. I think people — characters — are so different and flawed, and some are empowered and powerful and evolved, and some are truncated and lost. It can be 1920 and it can be 2004, and we can have these same things. What this movie will do or not do in that capacity, it’s beyond my understanding in this moment.” 

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