Is it true that Julia Roberts published a message calling on women to give up makeup?

This is not the first year that an emotional appeal has been circulating on the Internet, which the Hollywood star allegedly addressed to all women. We checked whether the actress actually shared such a message.

The text that is widely circulated on the Internet usually begins something like this: “World-famous Hollywood actress Julia Roberts has published a sensational message. In it she does not ask, she begs all women to take an active position and stop paying attention only to external beauty, to the detriment of themselves and their nature.”

In the message itself, the artist allegedly states that “perfection is a disease of many nations, we cover our faces with tons of makeup, regularly inject ourselves with Botox and starve ourselves to achieve the ideal size,” when we should take care of our soul first. To stop all this, Julia Roberts, according to her, takes the first step - she refuses makeup forever, wanting to see her wrinkles. She is also said to encourage others to “live and follow our nature.” “Appearance is the last thing you should value in a person. All that matters is the soul,” the actress allegedly concludes.

This text, in one version or another, has been circulating on websites for several years (“Ren-TV", "Peekaboo", Spletnik.ru, The Jizn, "Sea diva", "Gold", "Mamul.am", Postimees), as well as social networks. Some public pages on VKontakte have published this appeal several times in recent years (“Popular Science Psychology” - 406,000, 108,000 And 103,000 views, "Morality" - 269,000 And 136,000, “Window to a wonderful world” - 267,000 And 141,000), and for some one was enough (“Diary of a Happy Woman” - 373,000). The text was also distributed on Telegram (for example, channels “5 smart thoughts" - 66,000 views and "Psychology" - 25,000 views), and on Facebook (pages "The world is full of wonders" - more than 1000 reposts, "Psychology" - 637, "Cannon" - 587 and "Inspiration"- 521).

It is usually stated that Julia Roberts published her message on social networks. The actress avoided her presence on any platforms for many years. In 2013 she said: "It's like cotton candy: it looks so inviting and you just can't stop yourself from getting in there, and then in an instant your fingers are just left with sticky fingers." Soon the star statedthat she is “put off by the lack of human connection in all of this.” However, in June 2018, Roberts couldn't stand it and started a page on Instagram (username @juliaroberts), which to this day remains the only verified account of the actress on social networks.

It’s just bad luck: for example, Ren-TV and some other Russian-language sites broadcast a sensational message long before this account appeared, back in November 2016. And if we look at English-language sources, we will see that Western resources (Yahoo! Life, Huffington Post, AOL and many others) published a similar text on behalf of the actress even earlier. They referred to a now deleted publication on a completely different Instagram account @juliarobertsoriginal, posted on September 4, 2015. The account itself today too unavailable. The publication in the French edition will help us see what this post looked like Le Figaro:

So, it turns out that in the early fall of 2015, on the unverified (but, apparently, quite popular) Instagram page @juliarobertsoriginal, a photo of Julia Roberts without makeup appeared, accompanied by text that broadly coincides with the first half of the famous Russian-language message.

The second part of the viral text, in which the actress declares giving up cosmetics and expects similar actions from other women, is not in the original. We are talking about the following fragment: “Do you understand that artificial aesthetics rules the world, keeping us locked in the prison of its illusions about appearance? Instead of living and following our nature, we are forced to profess those canons of beauty that were imposed on us. But you know what? I'm tired of this. And I tell myself: stop. I encourage all of you to stop and remember who you really are, what you really want. Remember who you are. No one can ever meet 100% beauty criteria. Appearance is the last thing you should value in a person. All that matters is the soul. Remember this forever."

The above-mentioned Western media did not write anything about this part of the message either. According to our research, this fragment of text appeared on the Internet in Russian much earlier than in English, and the resulting “appeal to all women” was first published by a network resource The Jizn. It is important to note the following: yes, Julia Roberts, who recently turned 55, periodically allows herself selfie without makeup, however, she actively used and uses cosmetics Her personal makeup artist for the last quarter of a century is the famous specialist Genevieve Herr, who in October 2022 will detail told about the actress's makeup for a recent ceremony at the Academy Museum. Therefore, the second part of the message does not meet any criteria of truth.

As for the first part of the text, the presence of such a publication looks very strange against the background of what was in the interview before (2013), and after (2016) appeals, the actress confirmed her absence from social networks, including Instagram. Despite Roberts' superstar status, the @juliarobertsoriginal account was practically not referred to in the media on other occasions either before or after the incident with the message. The post itself from an unverified user is not completely original - it contains numerous quotes and inserts from the song Pretty Hurts singer Beyoncé. Moreover, the first part of the message appeared on Facebook at least September 1, 2015 (earlier than on Instagram), about which testify numerous citations on the specified date. In one of these posts there is link to the Julia Roberts Facebook page, which does not contain a single post today and marked as unofficial despite having over 600,000 followers.

Let us remind you that the Instagram account from which the wave of quoting the appeal began has also been deleted as of today. At the same time, the photo that Julia Roberts allegedly posted on her personal account (hinting in the text that she was showing people something new) is a frame from photo shoots without makeup, which the famous photographer Chuck Close arranged for 20 American stars in early 2014. These pictures were published in the March issue of Vanity Fair magazine. At the same time, Roberts’ verified account contains virtually no professional photographs—mostly pictures taken from personal devices and advertising photo. And for the above-described appeal, it would be more logical to take a new selfie without makeup, rather than post a magazine photo from a year and a half ago with the words “today I have wrinkles.” In other words, the question of the authorship of even the first part of the message, despite being quoted in a number of authoritative journals, raises very serious doubts.

Thus, the second half of the text (the one on which many viral publications focus) is definitely fictitious, and the beginning of the message also has a very dubious origin.

Cover photo: social media / Vanity Fair

Most likely not true

What do our verdicts mean?