Daily Inspiration Quote by Julia Roberts

Roberts is doing two things at once: accepting a compliment and quietly indicting the system that makes the compliment feel like news. “They say I can open movies” is industry shorthand for bankability, the cold math of who can pull people into theaters on name alone. For a male star, it’s assumed; for a woman, it’s treated like an exception worth narrating. Her phrasing keeps the tone light (“and that’s nice”) while letting the critique land: the bar is so low that proving women can carry a box office becomes a cultural event.

The subtext is about permission. Hollywood doesn’t just measure audiences; it trains them. If studios only bet big on men, the public learns to associate “event movie” with male faces. Roberts is pointing at that feedback loop and calling it out without sounding bitter or preachy. It’s a strategic kind of feminism: not manifesto, but matter-of-fact reframing. She’s aware that her personal success functions as a signal flare for other women, even if she didn’t create the rules.

Name-checking Costner and Schwarzenegger isn’t random. They’re avatars of two dominant male star modes of the era: the all-American everyman and the action-built superhuman. By saying “Not just the guys,” she collapses that mythology into a blunt category: male as default. The intent isn’t to dethrone them; it’s to widen the imagination of what a “movie star” can be, and to remind executives that audience desire isn’t fixed - it’s curated by who gets centered, financed, and repeated.