Julia Roberts Compares Performing On Broadway to Childbirth

Julia Roberts must think performing on Broadway is painful.

"It's like childbirth," the star said in the April issue of Vanity Fair. "You don't know until you've done it, but you get a little bit away from it and you go, 'Of course, I want to do that again. ' You get sucked back into doing theater, because it's really thrilling, and it does challenge you as an actor in really unique ways. "

Roberts spoke with director Mike Nichols about her upcoming portrayal of the Evil Queen in Tarsem Singh's Snow White adaptation, "Mirror Mirror, " which is set to premiere March 30. (Not to be confused with the other fairy tale film, "Snow White and the Huntsman," scheduled for a June 1 release.)

However, Roberts called going to the theater a "joyous experience."

"My dad would take my sister and me to plays when we were very young, like 6 or 7 years old," she said, adding that this experience growing up inspired her to make her Broadway debut in "Three Days of Rain" in 2006. "We saw 'Hair' in New York on summer vacation. We would go see Yul Brynner do 'The King and I' in Atlanta. It was phenomenal to be exposed to these kinds of things, because there's nothing else like the experience of seeing a play."

Roberts told Nichols that growing up in a theatrical family prompted her to become an actor. "I wouldn't have seen it as a real option if my parents weren't actors and my siblings," she said. Her parents founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop, and her siblings, Eric Roberts and Lisa Roberts Gillan, are performers. "It just wouldn't have occurred to me. "

Nichols, whose Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" opens March 15, has worked with Roberts on "Closer" and "Charlie Wilson's War." During the interview, he said that they had also spoken about doi! ng Shakespeare in the Park together with "Taming of the Shrew" or "Much Ado About Nothing."

While returning to the stage might frighten her, Roberts said that a little bit of anxiety is essential to the craft.

"Every first day of any job, you're getting ready and you think, 'I hope it's in there. I hope it comes out when it's supposed to,'" she said. "You have to feel that way; you have to be nervous."