Julia Roberts...Nutjob.

Here's a funny essay on Julia Roberts that was sent to people on MSNBC's Jeanette Walls' mailing list, which sums up my feelings for this overrated "actress" and her ilk:

July 31, 2002


Dear Readers:

I had promised myself I was going to leave Julia Roberts alone. After all, it would be downright snarky of me to give her the Scoop treatment on the happy occasion of her marriage.

Then Julia went and did it. She gave an interview to Diane Sawyer in which she blathered endlessly about her eternal love for Mr. Danny Moder. And I couldn't help myself.

What got me was when Julia gushed, "I was born to love and be the wife of this man." Never mind that the ink wasn't yet dry on his divorce papers and the ex-Mrs. Moder was still leaking lurid details about how Julia stole her man -- even while pretending to be a friend. But the ex's pain has not diminished Julia's joy in her new man. "He is formidable," Julia told Diane. "He is a man among men, unselfish and all-encompassing." Julia didn't mention that Moder has reportedly bestowed his formidable favors on more than 1,000 women.

Ah, Dear Readers, this does not bode well. In fact, when your skeptical Scooper heard Julia's irrationally exuberant declarations, she could not help but be reminded of Angelina Jolie's equally over-the-top mushy talk for that other formidable lover, Billy Bob Thornton. "We're addicted to each other," Angelina declared last year. "I'm madly in love with him and will be till the day I die." Now, after reportedly catching him in flagrante delicto with their sex therapist, Angelina is consulting tattoo-removing experts to get that now-moot "Billy Bob" removed from her shoulder. As well as the more troublesome tattoos in her nether region.

Celebs tend to be passionate folks, given to strong emotions of the moment. Thus, "madly in love for forever and ever" is a relative concept in Hollywood. Angelina and Julia aren't the only celeb wives to make over-the-top declarations of their undying love for their hubby.

"Tom is awesome," Drew Barrymore declared of her unfunny comedian spouse Tom Green. "We are in complete harmony." They split a month later.

"He is like my peace," Jennifer Lopez said of hubby Cris Judd in May. "He just brings me stability in a way that I really need it." Guess the luscious Ms. Lopez decided that stability is overrated. She dumped him that month and moved on to the less-stable Ben Affleck. Luckily, J. Lo didn't commit to anything really permanent when it came to Mr. Judd, like a tattoo.

This is not the first time that Julia has been in love for forever and ever. Back in the early 1990s, Julia got a tattoo as a gift of love from fiancé Keifer Sutherland, who, like Danny Moder, happened to be married to someone else when Julia met him. The tattoo was a red heart inside a Chinese symbol, which Julia said, means "strength of heart."

"My love for Keifer will last as long as this tattoo," Julia declared. That was before the would-be bride ran off with Keifer's friend Jason Patric. After Keifer allegedly said unkind things about Julia to a stripper. The tattoo remained intact.

Julia's heart rebounded when she met the peculiar-looking Lyle Lovett. He reminded Julia of Abraham Lincoln, on whom she has always had a crush. Julia married Lyle three weeks later. "I feel like this really pleasant calm has descended upon my life," Julia said. "It has to do with your own ability to make a perfectly correct decision. I think that's quite a feat, to look at something you've done and say 'This is completely right.' Every time I talk to him . . . or look at his picture . . or think about him, I think, Wow, I'm so . . . I'm so smart. I'm so lucky.'" The marriage lasted less than two years.

A few relationships later, Julia met the hunky Benjamin Bratt. The feeling of love was so immediate and so intense that Julia had a physical reaction to the encounter. "It was," she later said, "like something hit me over the head with a bat."

Luckily, the conked-over-the-head sensation was eventually replaced with the slightly less debilitating feeling of being snockered. "We're drunk with joy 24 hours of the day," Julia declared. "I've never been happier in my life."

Let's not even get into what Julia said about all those other loves of her life, including, to name a few, Liam Neeson, Daniel Day Lewis, fitness guru Pat Manocchia, Sean Penn and Matthew Perry.

Your Scooper expects an ugly reaction to this newsletter. She anticipates Julia defenders around the globe to arise and cry out collectively: So Julia is a little like Will Rogers. She never met a man she didn't like.

This, I am afraid, is not the case. Just ask Nick Nolte. The word from the set of "I Love Trouble" was that Nick and Julia hated each other so much that they refused to read the script with each other during rehearsals. And if you really want to see the unromantic, unmushy side of our Miss Julia, you should see her talking to a journalist when she's not in the mood to do so. I have excerpted, for your reading pleasure, a snippet of a conversation she had with a male reporter when she was promoting "Hook" back in 1991:

"Do you like the way the movie turned out?" a reporter from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer innocently asked.

"I haven't seen it yet," snapped Julia.

"What kind of motivation did you find for this unusual part?" continued the intrepid reporter.

"I don't think I want to get into personal things like that."

Undaunted, the reporter persisted. "Well then, what do you do when you're not working?"

"Lots of stuff," Julia said, "but I don't want to talk about it now."

The interview, believe it or not, went downhill from there. But let's not blame Julia. It was a difficult period in her life: one of those brief interludes when she wasn't madly and passionately and head over heels in love. Let's keep our fingers crossed -- for the sake of Danny and Julia and married women everywhere -- that this marriage lasts.

But there's one really, really bad omen here: Danny and Julia got matching tattoos. And Billy Bob is on the prowl. I remain, as always,

Your Faithful Scooper,


Jeannette Walls