Roberts: Streep is my parenting role model

Actress Julia Roberts has revealed how she views Meryl Streep as a role model when it comes to raising a family while in the public eye.

Roberts says Streep’s daughter Grace Gummer had helped put her mind at ease, when she told her about growing up on film sets and not realising her mother was a star until she was nine.

Roberts — who has three children, seven-year-old twins Hazel and Finn and four-year-old Henry with husband Daniel Moder — admitted she was worried about raising her children in the spotlight. Roberts worked with Gummer on the film Larry Crowne.

“I thought, here is a source of information. I said, ‘How old were you when you realised your mom was Meryl Streep?’ She said, ‘I think I was probably nine when I put that all together’,” the 44-year-old told Vanity Fair.

“I said, ‘Were you cool with it?’ She said, ‘Yeah, it was fine. There was no trauma.’ So that was hopeful,” she said.

The Pretty Woman star says she pities today’s young Hollywood stars — because they either make it or head straight to rehab.

“There’s the express elevator and there’s rehab. It’s so awful; nobody gets a fair trial-and-error period that everybody deserves and everybody needs.”

Roberts revealed her children don’t put the two worlds of private life and celebrity life together.

She recalled a time “on a crowded street, and somebody noticed me, and then another person noticed. Somebody said as we were walking past, ‘Oh, that’s Julia Roberts.’

“We all just kind of kept going, and then Finn said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s Julia Robinson.’ That’s what gives you perspective. It could be Robinson, it could be Johnson, because it has nothing to do with me as a person.”