Julia Roberts

With a top-drawer cast headed by Ryan Reynolds, Julia Roberts, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson and others, "Fireflies in the Garden" is a story of a deeply dysfunctional family suddenly fraying even faster at the seams. Unfortunately there is as much fraying being done by the film itself, which partially explains why it's been on the shelf for years. "Fireflies" unfolds in two separate eras — the abuse-marked childhood of Michael Taylor and about 20 years later as we catch up with the troubled but successful romance novelist he's become (Cayden Boyd plays the younger, Reynolds the older)

Actress Emma Roberts, the niece of superstar Julia Roberts, has blossomed into a fashion chameleon, but she wasn't always so glamorous. The young star started out on the red carpet for her aunt's movies in screen print shirts and cargo pants. She's since starred in her own impressive list of films and adopted the roll of fashionable socialite, hitting parties in outfits that range from androgynous and daring to ultra femme and dainty. Roberts, who can next be seen with Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston in the upcoming film "We're the Millers," slated to open August 2013, recently made an appearance at the second a nnual Sean Penn and Friends Help Haiti Home Gala at the Montage Hotel in Los Angeles.

President Barack Obama attracted major star power for a mid-week visit to Los Angeles, drawing out A-listers such as Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon to a fundraising event in Beverly Hills. The president arrived at LAX shortly before 5 p.m., whisked off to address the LGBT Leadership Council at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, an event hosted by Ellen DeGeneres. Following a four-song set from "Glee's" Darren Criss, Obama discussed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell to a crowd that included Cher and son Chaz Bono, "Modern Family" actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson and George Takei.

An A-list army gathered in Los Angeles on Friday for "Stand Up to Cancer," the biennial live fundraiser, backed by Hollywood and aired across the big four TV networks that works to raise money for cancer research. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Michael Douglas, Joe Manganiello, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Jessica Biel all appeared on the broadcast, executive produced by telethon vet Joel Gallen and actress Gwyneth Paltrow. "Up until the end, he was the love of my life," Paltrow shared with the audience at downtown's Shrine Auditorium, regarding her father Bruce who passed away in 2002 from oral cancer.  The commercial-free hour saw performances from Swift, Tim McGraw, Alicia Keys and a prerecorded number from Coldplay, led by Paltrow's husband, Chris Martin.

Dermot Mulroney is joining the cast of A-list stage and screen stars for the film adaption of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play "August: Osage County. " Mulroney will be reunited with his "My Best Friend's Wedding"  co-star Julia Roberts. In "August: Osage County," Mulroney will play Steve, a less-than-noble businessman whose eye wanders to the pot-smoking daughter of Barbara (Roberts), played by "Little Miss Sunshine's" Abigail Breslin. As previously announced, Tony Award winner Margo Martindale ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof")

An A-list army gathered in Los Angeles on Friday for "Stand Up to Cancer," the biennial live fundraiser, backed by Hollywood and aired across the big four TV networks that works to raise money for cancer research. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Michael Douglas, Joe Manganiello, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Jessica Biel all appeared on the broadcast, executive produced by telethon vet Joel Gallen and actress Gwyneth Paltrow. "Up until the end, he was the love of my life," Paltrow shared with the audience at downtown's Shrine Auditorium, regarding her father Bruce who passed away in 2002 from oral cancer.  The commercial-free hour saw performances from Swift, Tim McGraw, Alicia Keys and a prerecorded number from Coldplay, led by Paltrow's husband, Chris Martin.

I take exception to the Julia Roberts bashing in last week's Saturday Letters. As an actor, I have an acute appreciation of what it must take to succeed in this business, to remain on top for as many years as she has, and to be on a par with the top male actors. Why do people delight in bashing those few who triumph? She deserves not our admonition but our admiration. MARCIA ANN BURRS Thousand Oaks

Call it a preemptive paparazzi strike. Julia Roberts and her husband, cameraman Danny Moder, have released the first photos of their nearly 3-month-old twins to People magazine, which hit newsstands Friday. "We are releasing these photographs not only to share our happiness, but to ensure the privacy, safety and respect our babies deserve," the couple said in a statement. The photographs show Roberts with her sleepy-eyed twins: Phinnaeus Walter (Finn) and Hazel Patricia.

Julia Roberts is bound for Broadway to star in a revival of Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain," staged by Joe Mantello next spring. Though she has no professional stage credits -- Roberts isn't even a member of the stage actors' union, Actors' Equity -- she had participated in a reading of the play in a Los Angeles conference room in June, according to co-producer Marc Platt. "It was evident that it was a wonderful marriage of actress and role," he said.

Actress Julia Roberts and singer Lyle Lovett were married Sunday during a hastily arranged ceremony, her publicist said. Lovett's band performed "Angel Eyes" in honor of Roberts during the small church wedding in Marion, Ind., spokeswoman Nancy Seltzer said. Roberts, 25, met Lovett, 35, when they filmed 1992's "The Player," Seltzer said. It was the first marriage for both. The wedding was planned in two days, Seltzer said.

Gwyneth Paltrow has mastered the day job. The Oscar winner is capable in both the stilettos of "Iron Man's" Pepper Potts and in the herb garden she's displayed on her lifestyle blog Goop. So when given the chance to moonlight for a project like Stand Up to Cancer , the biennial televised fundraiser that utilizes an hour of commercial-free broadcasting across the big four networks and a slew of cable stations, she knew she couldn't phone it in. "When I do something, I want to actually do it, I want to commit and put my time in," Paltrow told us of her role as executive producer for the Sept.

Dermot Mulroney is joining the cast of A-list stage and screen stars for the film adaption of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play "August: Osage County. " Mulroney will be reunited with his "My Best Friend's Wedding"  co-star Julia Roberts. In "August: Osage County," Mulroney will play Steve, a less-than-noble businessman whose eye wanders to the pot-smoking daughter of Barbara (Roberts), played by "Little Miss Sunshine's" Abigail Breslin. As previously announced, Tony Award winner Margo Martindale ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof")

President Barack Obama attracted major star power for a mid-week visit to Los Angeles, drawing out A-listers such as Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon to a fundraising event in Beverly Hills. The president arrived at LAX shortly before 5 p.m., whisked off to address the LGBT Leadership Council at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, an event hosted by Ellen DeGeneres. Following a four-song set from "Glee's" Darren Criss, Obama discussed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell to a crowd that included Cher and son Chaz Bono, "Modern Family" actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson and George Takei.

Encased in a coffin, waiting to be brought back to life: That's how Snow White spends a good portion of the folk story that bears her name. There's no such downtime for the princess in the snappy retelling "Mirror Mirror," a fractured fairy tale that occupies the divide between Disney and Grimm. A booster shot of testosterone lends kinetic kick to director Tarsem Singh's visually inventive interpretation, without shortchanging the requisite froufrou or sugarcoating the story's dark Oedipal heart.

Snow White was driving hastily through West Hollywood, swerving her SUV out of a lane of cars jammed in traffic. Opportunities to make U-turns on Santa Monica Boulevard don't come frequently, so Lily Collins - who plays the classic fairy-tale princess in Friday's"Mirror Mirror" - pulled a quick illegal maneuver to minimize her time in the car. "It would have taken forever otherwise," the actress said in the parking lot of the French...

"A Dangerous Method," the intellectually stimulating look at the formative days of psychoanalysis, presents Viggo Mortensen in a transformative performance as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as his restrained protégé and rival, Carl Jung, and a bold Keira Knightley as the patient-turned-practitioner who came between them. But it was almost a Julia Roberts movie. "I first heard of and was intrigued by the story of Sabina Spielrein in a book by Aldo Carotenuto, 'A Secret Symmetry,'" says screenwriter Christopher Hampton of the character played by Knightley.

With a top-drawer cast headed by Ryan Reynolds, Julia Roberts, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson and others, "Fireflies in the Garden" is a story of a deeply dysfunctional family suddenly fraying even faster at the seams. Unfortunately there is as much fraying being done by the film itself, which partially explains why it's been on the shelf for years. "Fireflies" unfolds in two separate eras — the abuse-marked childhood of Michael Taylor and about 20 years later as we catch up with the troubled but successful romance novelist he's become (Cayden Boyd plays the younger, Reynolds the older)

Just a few years out of film school with an award-winning short in his backpack, Dennis Lee moved from New York to Hollywood at age 36 to make movies. Met with the usual crescendo of rejection, he cobbled together $500,000 from family and friends to direct "Fireflies in the Garden," the first screenplay he had written. Just weeks before he was to start shooting his tale about a domineering father's lasting impact on his family, Senator Entertainment, an American offshoot of a German film company, said it would give Lee $8 million to make the film.