Summary
- Emma Roberts discusses how her famous family has led to missed opportunities in her acting career.
- She reveals that having Julia Roberts as an aunt and Eric Roberts as a father has actually been a setback for her career in more ways than it’s been a benefit.
- Other actors with famous parents, like Kate Hudson and Allison Williams, have also shared the challenges of navigating Hollywood.
Emma Roberts is opening up about her famous family’s impact on her acting career, revealing it’s led to missed opportunities. Emma, who is Eric Robert’s daughter and Julia Roberts’ niece, recently weighed in on the “nepo baby” conversation during an interview with Flaunt. A 2022 Vulture article titled “The Year of the Nepo Baby” had previously ignited a discussion after celebrities mentioned in the piece spoke out publicly. Despite her father’s successful career (Eric Roberts has appeared in over 700 projects and earned nominations for King of the Gypsies and Runaway Train), Emma was not included in the list. “Should I be offended?” she joked, adding:
”
It was a cheap shot
to put all the celebrity kids on the cover of a magazine on babies’ bodies. It’s like, maybe the ‘Nepo Baby’ conversation would’ve been a more interesting article written intelligently in
Vanity Fair
with nuance, but instead, it was kind of this viral hating-on-people thing.”
Surprisingly, Emma Roberts revealed that having famous relatives actually worked against her professionally:
”
I’ve lost more jobs than I’ve gained from being in the business
. People have opinions and sometimes maybe they’re not good opinions of people in your family. I’ve never gotten a job because of it, I know I definitely have lost a couple of jobs because of it.”
And Roberts is not alone. Since the “nepo baby” article, several other actors with famous parents have spoken out about the challenges of navigating Hollywood. Kate Hudson said that being the daughter of Goldie Hawn and stepdaughter to Kurt Russell meant added pressure, as she felt like she “had to live up to something.” Additionally, she felt that some directors wanted to avoid hiring her due to her famous roots.
While Allison Williams recognized that she had been fortunate (she is the daughter of former NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and producer Jane Stoddard Williams), she shared that she sometimes felt like she had to “seem perfect all the time” because of her parents’ connections to the entertainment industry.
5:01
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Emma is the niece of Julia Roberts, whose illustrious career spans decades. Julia rose to fame in the late 1980s with films like Mystic Pizza before heading the iconic romantic comedy Pretty Woman opposite Richard Gere. She later earned an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Erin Brockovich. Julia Roberts’ career (and stardom) served as a cautionary tale for Emma. Late last month, during an appearance on the Table for Two podcast, Emma told host Bruce Bozzi:
”
I saw very up close what that [fame] really looks like with my aunt Julia
. It’s obviously, you know, it’s fun and it’s great, but there is a part of it that’s really scary… I remember as a kid, even in my later teens, I was like, ‘I never want my fame to outweigh my work, because
there’s nothing scarier to me than being so famous that you’re never left alone
.'”
4:55
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Emma began her career as a child actor and gained popularity on Nickelodeon’s Unfabulous after early roles in films like Blow. After Unfabulous, she transitioned into movies like Nancy Drew and Hotel for Dogs. In her adult career, she’s become known for horror and thriller roles, including Scream 4, Scream Queens, and several seasons on the FX series, American Horror Story. She has also appeared in comedies, including We’re the Millers and Holidate. In recent years, Roberts has also stepped behind the camera as a producer for several television shows.
Emma now stars in Prime Videos’ Space Cadet, which follows her character Rex, a Florida party girl who finds herself on a prestigious astronaut training program by lies and luck.
Space Cadet
is streaming on Prime Video.