America’s Sweetheart: It’s a celebrity archetype that publicists dream about as they fall asleep. It’s a title bestowed upon the bearer of the most winsome laugh, a laugh coming soon to a romantic comedy near you. It’s all unceasing charm, unobjectionable appeal. A person with a perma-1000-watt smile, flowing hair, and a down-to-earth ‘tude.
Julia Roberts is perhaps the exemplar A.S., and thus, a reporter for MTV questioned her about her thoughts on Jennifer Lawrence, whom he called the latest inductee to America’s Sweetheart coterie. Roberts did not flash a smile and flip her hair and blink her eyes and steal his heart and gush forth. Rather, she narrowed eyebrows and put some spikes in her tone:
She shoots flaming arrows. Is this a new Cupid tactic?
And the interviewer, Josh Horowitz, leaps with unconcealed delight that he has revealed something about the America’s Sweetheart Coven’s voting system — and asks, “So you didn’t want to admit her?” Roberts attempts to derail his questioning about the ASC and slyly snaps:
My card is expired and I didn’t get a new one.
It’s an odd conversation. Roberts qualifies that she thinks Jennifer Lawrence is “fabulous” (complete with a swoopy hand gesture), but says that she might be “too cool” for this America’s Sweetheart club. The club includes a rom-com sort of lady, who happily ties up shoelaces in movie posters. Roberts is perhaps right to qualify Lawrence as a little too edgy, and certainly right to side-eye this interviewer’s line of questioning. She gently calls the whole interview a “train wreck.”