The film, writer-director Tony Gilroy’s impressive and assured follow-up to ‘Michael Clayton,’ boasts plentiful plot twists, the Gatling-gun dialogue of a Bogey-Bacall flick and — most importantly — Roberts’ first true lead role since 2003′s ‘Mona Lisa Smile.’

Moviefone sat down with Roberts and a small panel of journalists for a relaxed but revealing chat about the film — and ended up unearthing quite a few fun facts in the process. From why she and Clive have such great on-screen chemistry to what it takes to be invited into her kitchen to why she’d rather eat the world’s biggest, greasiest slab of meat than read a gossip magazine, here are eight things we learned about Julia Roberts. – By Tom DiChiara

1. Playing venomous lovers in ‘Closer’ actually did make Julia and Clive closer.

Roberts and Owen first met and became friends on the set of 2004′s ‘Closer,’ in which they played a husband and wife who lie, cheat and verbally abuse the hell out of one another — and yet Roberts insists they had a blast filming it. “‘Closer’… is pretty ferocious at times,” she says. “But the great thing about that is that we came from a piece led by ‘The Master,’ Mike Nichols, and he really forced us to get in there and play those scenes no matter how raw or ugly. And so I think that with that kind of acting you either become good friends and really have a trust for each other, or you never talk to each other again — you know, you just kind of always feel uncomfortable around that person. And, fortunately, we were the former.” The evidence of this friendship can be seen in every chemistry-fueled scene the two share in ‘Duplicity’ — a fact of which Roberts is keenly aware: “I think that idea of safety and trust with a person allows you to be more fun and playful, which a lot of these scenes called for — just that little bit of sparkle and subtext.”

2. Julia likes to lie … on-screen.

Roberts’ sexy corporate double-crosser Claire Stenwick isn’t exactly the most moral person she’s ever played, but it’s impossible not to fall head-over-heels for her — as Owen’s Ray Koval does. And Julia can certainly understand the character’s appeal. “Well, I think the thing about Claire as the movie unravels [is] that her armor starts to fall away, or her drive shifts a little,” she muses. “The great thing about her is, like her or not, or whatever her motivation is, she’s perfectly happy with who she is and what she’s doing and how she’s accomplishing it. She’s kind of ruthless that way, so as things go on and as this relationship unfolds with Ray, for better or worse, it really does change her focus. I just love that scene in the airport in the end, you know, playing that scene. It was just — it’s masterful. Tony is a really, really smart guy because to watch these two people try to put their cards on the table and nobody believes anybody, it’s just great! I mean how do you convince the best liar you know that you’re not lying! It’s kind of, really, a super idea.”

3. She wouldn’t call ‘Duplicity’ a comeback, but she hasn’t been neglecting her kids either.

Before ‘Duplicity,’ America’s Sweetheart hadn’t tackled a full-on leading role since 2003′s ‘Mona Lisa Smile,’ having appeared in mostly ensemble films or supporting roles since starting a family with cameraman Danny Moder (they have three children). But she insists this isn’t a comeback. Says Roberts: “Well, it doesn’t seem like that long ago that ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ came out, and then I have a movie ['Fireflies in the Garden'] coming out on Father’s Day, so I mean I feel busy … I think somebody said that I made 13 movies in the past 6 years.” When a reporter points out that this includes her voiceover work in ‘Ant Bully’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web,’ Julia laughingly responds, “Well work is work. If I leave my house to go to work, it’s work.” And she recognizes that reporters can spin things the other way, too: “Listen, if somebody wanted to, [they could] say I’m not being attentive to my children and, ‘Look, she’s made all these movies in the past six years.’ So you can make whatever case you want.” But for her part, Roberts feels that she’s been “pretty methodical” in her work habits, pointing out that she doesn’t often do multiple movies in the same year. “Early on, I mean, I would take any job that was offered — not really. But, yeah, I never quite had that kind of momentum in work that some people do. I admire it; I think I’m lazier than that.”

4. If you make ‘Michael Clayton,’ Julia will invite you into her kitchen.

Say you’re a filmmaker and you want to get Roberts to commit to your film — what does it take? “It’s just really an instinct. I just kind of feel like, ‘Okay, yeah, I want to be a part of this,’” she says. As for why she chose to do ‘Duplicity’ specifically, the answer is simple: “It’s the whole package. I mean, it’s certainly a really well crafted script, this one, and Tony is so alluring, that brainiac. You know, he came over to my apartment and sat in my kitchen, and we had a long conversation. And I just remember saying to him: ‘If you tell me that you are going to be the guy who has been sitting in my kitchen for the past three hours on the set for the next six months, then I’m in! If you’re gonna be this guy.’ And he absolutely was the guy that sat in my kitchen. To this day, he is the same person.” And in case you were wondering, Roberts adds, “Not everybody gets to come into the kitchen.”

5. She’s not exactly Paparazzi Superfan No. 1.

Sorry, paps, but Julia just doesn’t find those sneaky snapshots of celebs taking their kids to school or picking up their dog’s poo all that fascinating. “It’s so insidious and pointless,” she says of the paparazzi’s relentless pursuit to capture the excruciating minutiae of stars’ lives. “I think that takes away from getting to have this special moment where you go and see someone in a movie. That magic gets diluted because you see these people every hour, every day in something that’s bound together and called a publication … If I could avoid it altogether I would, but I also love my job. And [in] a situation like this where there’s a movie I really enjoyed making, I am happy to talk about it. I just think it’d be nice if there were some clearer divisions of what people think is interesting.”

6. She refuses to read the gossip rags.

Julia may be a fixture on the pages of the tabloids, but they’re certainly not bathroom reading material in the Roberts-Moder household. “I’m not a consumer. I used to be. It got kind of so sickening.” How sickening? “It’s like eating a giant cheeseburger, and halfway through you’re like: ‘What the f*** am I doing?! This is gonna make me sick.’” That said, she’s all for a classy photo shoot in a respectable magazine. “I, like anyone, like to see a nice picture of Clive in a magazine, but I don’t need to see a picture of Clive in his boxer shorts taking out his garbage. I think that’s where people think they want so much coverage. They think they want those private moments stolen away. But they don’t really because it does make you sick and you do end up looking at it and thinking: ‘I really shouldn’t be seeing this. I really shouldn’t be voting on the popularity of who has the cutest baby. Doesn’t that make me kind of a small person?’ So, I think that we just need some relief and some re-programming.” And some pants to wear while taking out the garbage.

7. Julia isn’t (technically) done with romantic comedies.

While Roberts has moved easily and gracefully from genre to genre, some of her most memorable and beloved films have been romantic comedies: ‘Pretty Woman,’ ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding,’ ‘Notting Hill,’ and the list goes on. But she hasn’t zipped up her hooker boots or laced up a wedding dress for a rom-com in almost eight years. Still, the 41-year-old actress isn’t opposed to doing another one. “It’s not dead to me,” she says of the genre. “I’ve read a couple really funny romantic comedy scripts in the last year, which is unusual, but it hasn’t been something that I can apply myself to in the circumstances that were presented in the script. Because I think you kind of have to change the game a little bit for it to work the older you get … You kind of have to change the circumstances to accommodate that and sometimes it just, the map doesn’t work for me. But, you know, it’s certainly not dead, and I enjoy having the laugh reading it.”

8. Julia and niece Emma Roberts never talk shop.

Eighteen-year-old Emma Roberts is quickly climbing the Hollywood ranks, thanks to starring roles in ‘Aquamarine,’ ‘Nancy Drew’ and ‘Hotel for Dogs,’ but it doesn’t sound like she’s being coached by her Aunt Julia. “I don’t really give Emma any advice about show business,” Roberts confesses. “You know, our conversations tend to be on a more personal family level.” As for her own kids, Julia’s in no rush to have them join the family biz.: “My first instinct is that I would prefer if my children wanted to be artists that they wait, you know, that they just wait — as long as they can.”

Michelle Obama has nothing on Julia Roberts.

On the Monday after the Oscars, there was the elusive actress, in a fitted black blazer, jeans and rippling locks, with all the presence of a polished but approachable politician, pressing palms and personally greeting each member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. — that idiosyncratic group that bestows the Golden Globes — in a conference room of the Four Seasons Hotel. The line to speak with her was long, its denizens frequently shabby and odd and gushing, but Roberts did not flag, dutifully raining that glorious, improbable smile on every grateful scribe and posing for a memorializing photo.

She then disappeared, and returned with her hair upswept, sporting a green, summery linen top. She did a quick photo shoot (as the great “Slumdog Millionaire” actor Irrfan Khan, a hotel guest, stopped by and introduced himself) and retreated for this interview into an almost furniture-less meeting room. She perched on the only couch, eventually slinging one leg up in that idiosyncratic, long-legged recline, often seen in her movies and magazine spreads.

Unlike her married peers (Brangelina or TomKat), Roberts and husband Danny Moder have maintained a distinctly more selective media presence, and the Oscar-winning actress has emerged from her cocoon only to discuss her new film, “Duplicity” — the first movie she’s actually top-lined since 2003 — which opens Friday.

It’s a snarky romance-thriller about two former spies — looking to score really big — in the underhanded world of corporate espionage. She and Clive Owen — the two were last seen viciously battling on screen in 2004′s “Closer” — play charming scoundrels, madly in love but congenitally unable to trust. The film, written and directed by ” Michael Clayton’s” Tony Gilroy, is told through flashbacks and purposeful misdirects, leaving the viewer to puzzle out the extent of almost every character’s mendacious ways.

But that’s just work. What has preoccupied Roberts for the last few years has been motherhood, and the evidence of her other focus — Henry, 2, and Hazel and Phineas, 4 — were seen shortly before the interview, hanging out at the entrance of the hotel. “We move as this pack,” says Roberts. “This morning Danny got them ready while I got me ready. Load them up in the car, and here we come.”

These days, Roberts has the air less of a star who happens to be a mother and more that of a mother who occasionally dips her toe into the world of work. Even in a vaguely sterile hotel room, she emanates happiness, not the manufactured “I’m happy in this public situation” professional facade but that deep-in-your-bones calm that’s hard to fake.

At 41, she is almost (miraculously) wrinkle-free, as if age and gravity have decided just to skip this one person. The skin is tawny, the hair blondish for the moment, the only seeming minute flaw an infinitetesimally small mole under one eye — only really apparent on a 20-foot screen. Roberts insists it has always been there, and she and her minions are forever telling the magazines not to airbrush it out, because that “blands” out her face.

“Duplicity,” a kind of sultry kissing cousin to Steven Soderbergh’s jaunty “Ocean’s” series (which featured Roberts in the first two installments), keys off her knowing confidence. There’s a memorable scene when her character saunters languorously down the streets of Rome in a knockout, form-fitting dress evocative of 1960s Italian cinema. All the time, she’s watched by Owen’s spy, a man she once seduced and abandoned. “That dress took us the whole movie to find,” she says. “There was a look that Tony was going for. This movie has great style, just a real cool sense of itself. We as a country and culture have gotten sort of sloppy. I love the idea of cleaning it up and buttoning it up and having a point of view visually, wardrobe-wise.”

“Duplicity” evinces a kind of genteel cynicism that runs through many of her recent films — with the hipster heisters in “Ocean’s,” the brutal, adulterous lovers of “Closer” and most recently the carousing congressman in ” Charlie Wilson’s War.” These movies are nothing like her own life, which may be the (un)conscious point, says Roberts. “I think of my life as a pretty sunny existence.” Films are “how I explore what I don’t want out of my life in a safe place.”

The radiant grin, the signature of such films as “Pretty Woman,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Notting Hill,” exists off-screen for the moment. While contemporaries like Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Jessica Parker are still looking for love in movies, Roberts says: “I can’t play those parts anymore. . . . It just doesn’t work for me at 41, with three kids and happily married. It doesn’t hold the same interest that it did for me once upon a time.”

It takes two

One notable fact about the shooting of “Duplicity”: There were scheduled breaks for . . . breast-feeding. “It was like every 2.5 hours,” says Roberts with a laugh. “It was like being Swedish. You felt like the mother is so completely supported in her motherness.”

Gilroy wrote “Duplicity” almost eight years ago on assignment from Universal. The film became regenerated when Owen came to a party during the filming of “Michael Clayton” and George Clooney suggested casting Owen in “Duplicity.”

“I didn’t offer it to [Owen] that night,” says Gilroy, but “I did stick around and had a couple of drinks with him, and I saw something there I had never seen before. George was right.” Owen quickly became Gilroy’s “co-conspirator” on the project. They both wanted Roberts.

The reason: the chemistry between the leads.

It was Mike Nichols who initially paired Roberts with Owens in “Closer.” “She and Clive. . . . They pick up each other’s rhythms and set up a rhythm together,” he says. “They are made to play together.”

Or, as Owen says, “Working with her . . . the dialogue feels buoyant and alive.”

Getting Roberts to sign on for “Duplicity” wasn’t exactly easy. Although she loved the script’s “intrigue and humor,” she was pregnant. “I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know why I’m reading this. I’m going to have a baby.’ I respectfully passed and told them I’m not into working right now,” she says.

Time passed. The project recrystallized, and the duo asked again. There was no answer until Gilroy, who lives in New York, got a call seemingly out of the blue that Roberts “wants to see you tomorrow,” he recalls.

Toys covered the floor, and Mary Poppins sang softly on the TV when director Tony Gilroy arrived at Julia Roberts‘ New York City apartment in the fall of 2007. The actress, who has three kids with husband Danny Moder, seemed to have relegated herself to ensemble work, but Gilroy was determined to woo her back to the screen in a major way. They sat in her kitchen, sizing each other up. He told her why she’d be perfect in Duplicity, as a slick corporate spy who trades kisses and quips with an equally smooth Clive Owen. Then Roberts’ new baby, Henry, started burbling for his mama, 3-year-old twins Finn and Hazel woke from their naps, and the meeting took a G-rated turn. ”It started off, I thought, with me seeming very chic,” says Roberts, ”because it was just me and Tony sitting having a cup of tea. Then one by one they all woke up and came in until I looked like Mother Hubbard.”

Today, Roberts is tucked away in a suite at midtown Manhattan’s Ritz-Carlton hotel. Her kids are safely ensconced in another room, always near their mother, but shielded from the rigors of her public life. Roberts is in game spirits, and she takes a crack at writing the headlines that will inevitably trumpet her return to the spotlight — and question her relevance going forward. ”The Pretty Woman Is Back!” she teases. ”The Working Woman! Everybody’s talking about ‘Oh, this is her comeback’ and ‘Ooh, she’s 41 and she’s working and not a lot of girls in their 40s are working.”’ She shakes her head, her face sliding into that famous grin. ”Well, I’m baaaa-aaaack,” she says in a patient voice, free of any urgency. We might have missed her more than she missed us.

Give the woman credit for holding out for a grown-up role. With Duplicity (out March 20), Roberts had the chance to fall in love on screen without first having to fret over a biological clock or whine for her man to propose. ”There are no issues about what to wear,” she says gratefully. ”Nobody’s drunk or tripping in a hallway.” Best of all, she could get back in the ring with Owen, who, as her boorish husband in the 2004 drama Closer, ripped Roberts open in what has to rank as one of film’s most brutal breakup scenes. (”You f—ed-up slag,” he spat into America’s Sweetheart’s face.) So Gilroy didn’t worry that his actor would shrivel in the presence of Roberts’ star wattage. ”I didn’t have to spend a lot of time saying ‘Hey, Clive, you better butch up for this scene,”’ the director laughs. ”He brings that [masculinity] with him.”

It was Roberts’ buddy George Clooney who helped reunite the couple. While shooting Michael Clayton, he and Gilroy, who directed the film, were unwinding one evening at a New York club. Gilroy was already eyeing his next project, Duplicity, a romantic thriller he’d written about undercover agents who may or may not be gaming each other, even as they tumble into bed. Clooney had invited Owen to stop by the club that night. When Owen arrived, Clooney pushed Gilroy to get the man a drink. ”You should do Duplicity with him,” Clooney whispered in Gilroy’s ear. That did the trick. ”Clive was so charming and so loose,” Gilroy says of the actor, who’s best known for playing serious men in some form of rugged panic. ”There was so much more going on than I had seen on screen. Sitting with him, I thought, Well, God, if I can be the first person to get this…. He really can almost just play himself.” (Roberts chuckles when reminded of how quickly Gilroy took to Owen: ”Well, I think if you met Clive in a bar, you’d probably be taken with him too.”)

In any case, Gilroy finally had his guy. Now everybody put the full-court press on Roberts. ”She’s the best at playing this kind of material,” says Owen. ”She’s got a deftness and a lightness of touch and an ease. She was far and away the choice for us.” So Clive called her, singing the script’s praises. Then Clooney called her, singing Gilroy’s. But Roberts had some news for the filmmakers. ”Listen,” she said, ”I’m going to have a baby. I’m not doing this movie.” Gilroy and Owen decided the film wouldn’t work with another actress, and opted to wait.

And so, when Henry was 8 months old, Roberts engaged in one very long take-your-kids-to-work exercise. ”They were in the trailer, hanging out, reading books, jumping on the one bed they’re allowed to jump on, Henry’s taking naps,” she says of life on the Duplicity set. ”To make a movie as a mother of three children under 3? That’s an accomplishment I’m proud of.” She knows she is the luckiest of working moms, with bosses who want to keep her happy, instead of the other way around. Roberts waves away the suggestion that Duplicity is her sexiest movie yet. (”That’s just because my boobs are so big in it,” laughs the actress, who was nursing Henry on the set.) But as women the world over fall for Owen, who at 44 is just hitting his stride as a leading man, Roberts’ turn in this film should quell speculation over whether her most 
 seductive years are behind her. ”I think the days of ‘Oh, we hit 40 and we’re f—ed!’ are really over,” she says, her firm rat-a-tat voice willing it so. ”Because the best actresses around who are working with consistency are Susan Sarandon, Frances McDormand, Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Holly Hunter. They’re not 30. And what’s going on with girls in their 20s? Where are the movies that are motivated by the 20-year-olds? There aren’t any! There certainly aren’t as many as there were when I was in my 20s.”

The game in Hollywood has changed, Roberts says. ”The way a person was received and treated used to be a lot more methodical. Like for me: ‘Okay, Satisfaction was cute, she’s a little bit chubby, we’re not sure about the hair, but we’re not going to discount her. [TV movie] Baja Oklahoma, okay, still chubby, but okay.’ You were given these little tries, and you were paid accordingly. Now people go from relative obscurity to being wildly famous and hugely overpaid and expectations are so out of proportion, and it’s a huge disaster story.”

But here she is, 20 years into her career, with a mass of photographers still waiting for her outside the hotel. This winter she’ll begin production on Eat, Pray, Love, playing the real-life writer Elizabeth Gilbert, who fled a broken marriage and turned her recuperation in Italy, India, and Indonesia into an Oprah-endorsed phenomenon.

As the conversation ends, Roberts decides to personally introduce Owen, who’s stationed one floor below. A bodyguard in the hotel hallway assures her that her three kids have all made it safely, secretly home. In the elevator, she coos over her babies. ”Well, Finn is a dreamboat. Green eyes and red hair. Danny had that exact color hair as a boy. And then Hazel and Henry both have platinum hair and blue eyes.” There’s a lightness to Roberts that’s palpable, she’s told. ”You should meet my husband,” she says with a devious whisper, before stopping to rap on the door. ”Ding-dong!” Roberts singsongs as she enters her costar’s room. She wraps her long arm around her interviewer’s shoulders in a motherly fashion. ”This lovely lady…hates you!” she tells Owen, then laughs. She grabs the actor, who slings a chummy arm around her neck, and gives him a hard kiss on the lips. ”I’m going home!” she announces, with a fist in the air.

First she must make her way through a pack of paparazzi hissing to one another about whether Julia Roberts is still the biggest movie star in the world. Let them. She has to get back to her life.

NEW YORK — All it took was a question about sex — and out came that famous Julia Roberts guffaw of a belly laugh, echoing around a Manhattan hotel suite overlooking Central Park.

The abruptness of the Oscar winner’s loud chortle Friday even made her ”Duplicity” co-star Clive Owen start a bit in his seat. But then, as the actor admitted later, it is Roberts’ ”brilliant sponteneity” that is one of the things he loves most about acting with her.

Oh yes, we should get back to that question about sex — actually sexiness.

Given she and Owen play lovers — and spies turned corporate espionage agents — in ”Duplicity,” it seemed logical to query what each found sexy in the opposite sex.

After letting out her big laugh (and showcasing Hollywood’s most celebrated smile), Roberts quipped, ”My husband hates it when I talk about him,” clearly indicating ”sexy” to her immediately translates into ”Danny Moder,” the father of her three children.

While Roberts deftly dodged chatter about her spouse and his well-known aversion to the spotlight, the actress did have a one-word definition for what she finds sexy in a man: ”vocabulary. … I am a sucker for really good vocabulary … and someone who can carry on a good conversation — about a lot of different topics.”

As for the spy role, Roberts said she was delighted to ”play one in the movies” but could never do it for real.

”I think I’d be a bad spy. I’m just too stupid,” quipped Roberts, meaning she didn’t have the kind of brain capable of keeping all the lies straight to be successful as a covert agent.

”It’s something we have in common,” said Owen, who has been in such spy thrillers as ”The International” and ”The Bourne Identity.”

”We’re just too open and honest … too much in the present to pull those things off for real. I don’t know how those people do it,” added the actor.

Roberts hasn’t been completely absent from the multiplexes in recent years, thanks to co-starring in ”Charlie Wilson’s War,” ”Closer” (with Owen), ”Mona Lisa Smile” and ”Ocean’s Twelve” and voicing the spider in ”Charlotte’s Web.” But ”Duplicity” marks the actress’ return to a leading role for the first time since ”The Mexican” and ”America’s Sweethearts” in 2001.

What was it that got her to jump back into the Hollywood mainstream?

”As they say, timing is everything. It all just worked perfectly,” said Roberts, who said she so loved ”being a mom and a wife, I really didn’t want to leave all that for the length of time you have to commit to playing a leading role in a film.”

But her twins have grown, and even young son Henry (who darted in and out of the ”Duplicity” interviews a few times Friday) is old enough for her to take along.

”But the main hook, I believe, was the fact we were filming a lot in New York [where Roberts maintains a home] for this one,” said ”Duplicity” writer and director Tony Gilroy.

For Roberts, ”as is always the case, it ultimately turns on the script.” When Owen said, ”This script had some of the best dialogue I’ve ever had the privilege of repeating in any film,” his-co-star nodded in vigorous agreement.

Along with playing a ”snappy sort of intelligent character, who also has an emotional life,” Roberts said she was fascinated to learn about corporate espionage.

”I laughed when I heard Tony tell us how they call it ‘competitive intelligence,’ ” she said. “Isn’t that a great way of disguising what it really is? Stealing your competitors’ ideas?”

Gilroy, who was drawn to the subject as a followup to his ”Michael Clayton,” said ”there isn’t anything in our movie that hasn’t happened for real.

”There is no shortage of people doing this, and there isn’t a major multi-national corporation anywhere that doesn’t have a large competitive intelligence department. It’s just a fact of life in today’s world.”

She didn’t have to watch her back.

“What a relief. I didn’t have to check the toilet for anything or the light bulbs or the phone,” she says of the on-set pranks by her Oceans Twelve pals. “It was just good old-fashioned friendship.”

And fun. Roberts, 41, returns to the big screen in the romantic caper Duplicity, in theaters March 20, reuniting with her Closer costar Owen. She says Owen, 46, makes her laugh constantly, which helped sparked instant chemistry onscreen.

“We have a similar sense of humor,” she says. “Our list of priorities in our personal lives are not different. We are both happily married with families and lead a pretty normal, unaffected existence within in this odd universe of show business that we’ve both chosen to go into.”

Roberts and Owen play spies turned corporate operatives in the midst of an on-again and off-again love affair trying to scheme and seduce each other using quick banter.

“I’m Southern so I can talk really fast,” says the Oscar-winning actress. “I grew up on Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, His Girl Friday movies – that rat-a-tat-tat talking cadence and that rhythm. I love that kind of thing.”

One thing she doesn’t love as much, at least right now, is the thought of her three children – twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 4, and son, Henry, 1, joining her and cameraman dad Danny Moder in show business.

“My first instinct is that if my children wanted to be artists, that they wait,” Roberts says. “I would prefer that they just wait as long as they can.”

“Not many paparazzi follow me now,” she laughed, ensconced in a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “It’s just the slow ones who haven’t yet figured out I’m not the one to follow.” She obviously had not seen the swarm of photographers massing at the hotel entrance waiting for her exit, a testament to her enduring popularity and the interest surrounding the imminent release of Duplicity, a jaunty spy thriller in which she has her first starring role in nearly five years and which reunites her with her Closer co-star Clive Owen.

Although she is devoting more time nowadays to being a housewife and mother to three young children the Oscar-winning actress insists that she has never really been away from acting.

“Of course my life has changed and I work less, but I was never really one to work too much,” she said. “I never really did years of movie-after-movie-after-movie but when you’ve got three toddlers in the house you’re performing all day long, anyway, with puppet shows and stories—I act around the clock.” Not so long ago the Pretty Woman star was the world’s highest-paid actress, commanding $20 million a picture and living in the spotlight of movie premieres, parties and photo shoots. But nowadays the 41-year-old actress prefers life at home as a wife to her husband of nearly seven years, cameraman Danny Moder, and mother to their children, four-year-old twins Hazel and Phinn and 18-month old Henry.

“There are some days when as soon as you’ve finished cooking breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen it’s time to start lunch and by the time you’ve done that you’re doing dinner and thinking there has to be a menu we can order from. But then there are some days when it’s just so creative and so much fun and my kids will help me and, as with anybody who’s a mom or a wife, it just become a part of your day. Some days it’s super-fun and some days it’s a chore.

“My mom used to make everything. She had a great garden and composted and made everything from scratch—peanut butter, bread, jelly, everything. I don’t know how she did it because all those things take time and love and labour. I only do half the stuff she does – but there’s still time.”

Her commitment to her family even prompted her to turn down an invitation to join previous Oscar winners on stage at this year’s Academy Awards show.

“My husband had been away and just returned home so I felt it best to stay home and welcome him and be with my family,” she said. “That was my priority so we watched the show on television.”

Roberts has been lured back briefly into the public eye by Duplicity, writer-director Tony Gilroy’s tale of corporate espionage and corruption.

She and Clive Owen portray ex CIA and former MI6 agents respectively who, now working for rival multi-national corporations, try to outscheme and outseduce each other as they battle to secure the formula for a product that will bring a fortune to the corporation that patents it.

Roberts believes the friendship she formed with the British actor when they worked together on Closer sparked instant chemistry on the screen in Duplicity. “Either you have chemistry with someone or you don’t,” she said.

“I love Clive and I think we have chemistry because we have a similar spirit and energy.

“That’s something we share in common and having done Closer together we have a great understanding of each other so we were excited to come back together in this movie. We had to be all serious and sexy but after the director said ‘cut’ we would just be laughing at ourselves because it’s just so silly and funny.” Clive Owen was recommended to director Tony Gilroy for the role by George Clooney, a longtime admirer of Owen’s, who starred in Gilroy’s Michael Clayton.

“We actors see Clive as someone who is at the top of his fame and he’s just a lovely guy and to spend time with him is just a joy,” said Roberts.

“He doesn’t take his job too seriously which is a relief, but he’s very good at it and he comes incredibly prepared. He’s a complete human being and I think that gives him an ease that makes you just want to be around him.” Julia Roberts has been a star since her first film, Mystic Pizza, more than twenty years ago. She has three Oscar nominations and one win—as best actress for 2000′s Erin Brockovich—and for more a decade was the world’s highest paid actress. She has made such hit films as Pretty Woman, which won her an Academy Award nomination, The Pelican Brief, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride and My Best Friend’s Wedding, but has also suffered through a number of flops.

Not many people remember Something to Talk About, Ready to Wear, I Love Trouble and Mary Reilly. Then there was her disastrous supporting role as the fairy Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg’s “Hook,” which led to a falling out between her and the famous director and caused her to take two years away from acting.

More recently she co-starred in Closer, took cameo roles in Ocean’s 11 and 12 and three years ago she achieved her long-held ambition of appearing on Broadway for twelve weeks in the play Three Days Of Rain.

“That’s a hard place to be, on stage eight times a week,” she reflected.

“It’s relentless, but it’s also magical and amazing. I would absolutely do it again, for sure.” She met Danny Moder on the set of the movie The Mexican in 2000.

Moder, who was married, filed for divorce and they were married on July 4 2002 in Taos.

It was a marriage cynics said would never last, particularly given the actress’s previous history of broken relationships. She had just ended a romance with actor Benjamin Bratt and her previous boyfriends had included her co-stars Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dylan McDermott, Matthew Perry and Keifer Sutherland, whom she left for her best friend Jason Patric only days before their planned wedding. She also had had a short-lived marriage to country singer Lyle Lovett.

This time, she says, it’s for good, despite the temptations offered by travel and movie sets. “[Danny] loves Clive as much as I do. It doesn’t make any difference that you work with some handsome, talented guy. There are beautiful women walking around the supermarket. There’s no shortage of interesting people in the world, so I think you have a connection with your partner that becomes an unbreakable bond and that’s what being married is.”

She and her family divide their time between an apartment in New York, a sprawling ranch in Taos, New Mexico, and a solar-powered house in Malibu.

Although she has graced the covers of virtually very glamour magazine in the world at one time or another, Julia Roberts insists she is not one to worry about making herself up to look glamourous. “When you’ve got four people to get dressed to get out the door you don’t really spend a lot of time on yourself,” she said. “But that’s the way I roll anyway. I was never one to do my hair and make-up just to go to the market, so it’s not that much different. If I get a little eye cream on, I feel I’m ahead of myself.

Roberts has another movie due out soon, Fireflies in the Garden, a family drama which she made two years ago and on which her husband was the director of photography. She has no other definite movie plans although she has no intention of giving up acting entirely.

“I’ll just be going to work on jobs that I like and with people I admire and who I’m interested in. I like a good balance of working with people I’ve worked with before, because there’s a great comfort and joy in that, but also working with new people, where every day you have this new experience with someone. That, for me, is enough, and that’s where I get my inspiration.”

Duplicity opens on March 20.

“I don’t think so,” she said, adding that it was easier thanks to reuniting with “Closer” co-star Clive Owen.

“In a movie that’s relying so much on chemistry and, you know, kissing, you want to be with your buddy,” she said. “It is awkward, when you’re not kissing your true love.”

Even more awkward for Roberts? A scene that called for nudity.

“I sort of… disrobed,” she said. “I’m like the G-rated actress!”

The star has spent more time with her husband, Danny Moder, and their children than on screen in the last few years, but she told Potts that it’s been time well spent.

“I’m not really one to work a lot,” she said. “I just want to enjoy [the kids] and be able to fully participate in what’s going on with each of them.”

And for Roberts, who had her third child, Henry, in June 2007, three is enough.

“We’re a trio,” she said.

And while life at home won’t find her kissing Clive Owen, the star seems at no loss for romance.

“Best thing about being a mom?” Potts asked.

“That Danny’s their dad,” she said.