More with Julia Roberts!

Let's go back to California wine country to pick up our dish with Julia about her Eat Pray Love leading men, finding spirituality and her simple advice for teens on love.

TeenHollywood: As an actress, how did you access all the emotion to run the gamut of what your character has to go through on her self-search?

Julia: Well, it's interesting that this was one of the first situations that I've been in that did call for a lot of emotional availability. There just came a point where all I'd have to do was think about what these people were really going through, the truth of whatever the situation was. I felt like it would all just be right there in front of me.

Really what Liz Gilbert wrote about her experiences was so rich. Her ability to share all those feelings is so keen that I felt like if I just really pondered what that must've felt like, it would just appear. I think you have to find a way to relate to all of it. This particular journey that she goes on, it's a lot for me to try and think about and intellectualize and then let all of that go and just connect to all the people that she encounters as a very open vessel. That's what I think she did.

TeenHollywood: In India, Liz befriends a 17-year-old girl going into an arranged marriage. Would you have any advice for teens on love?

Julia: Talk to your mother..... really. Get your mom to tell you what she really knows and don't take advice from actors. We don't know anything.

TeenHollywood: Wise. Did the fact that you would film in the actual places [Italy, India and Bali] draw you to making the movie?

Julia: [There's something about] becoming an actor to see the world. I think that's one of the things that was hugely interesting and ultimately gratifying for all of us, to really make those efforts and go to those places and have a more authentic experience to try and portray.

TeenHollywood: These is something in the book about each person having a favorite or representative word. What is yours?

Julia: I did have a word. I guess it's 'amnesia' now. What was my word? It wasn't 'hope'. That sounds sappy. I'm going to say that 'loyal' is my word.

TeenHollywood: What was it like working with Billy Crudup and Javier Bardem, Liz's men in the film?

Julia: It's funny because I have to say that Billy Crudup is one of my favorite actors. I've seen him on stage. I've seen him in movies. So one of my concerns with him playing the husband that I leave was I didn't want anybody at that point, that early in the movie, to disconnect from what I was going on to do. I want them to stay with me. Billy I think, in a lot of ways, just had the greatest challenge to help create a marriage that you believe in and believe these people had a significant relationship and that it just fell apart in their hands. It was like a magic trick. I don't know how he did it. It was just amazing and so great and fun. The sad part was that then it was over and I had to leave him.

Javier showed up [in Bali] and it was like deciding to get a puppy [we laugh]. You have everything in your house worked out, like, 'My life is so settled and so fixed up. I will get that puppy.' Then the puppy comes in and you're like, 'I'm way too tired to have a puppy.' He came in with all this gusto and enthusiasm and excitement, like, 'Lets have lunch. Do you want to read some of the scenes and go over some stuff?' Then you realize, 'Oh, wait, no. This is getting good. Yeah, lets have lunch. Lets go over the scenes. Lets look at the stuff.' His excitement was so contagious.

TeenHollywood: Didn't I read somewhere that you were afraid to be near him after his scary portrayal of the weird killer in No Country For Old Men?

Julia: It's been well reported that I was a little terrified to be around him after No Country for Old Men and I'm sorry to say at one point that he pulls out a picture of him from [that movie]. I'd just gotten a grip on the way he really looks and then he gets me back. But, it was just great fun and play. He comes across as incredibly comfortable with his acting and his performing. It really does put you at ease. I said to him near the end, 'I thought you'd be so intense and broody and weird. I'd have to be handling you and stuff and you're so sweet and funny and this was so easy.' He goes, 'I'm not normally. I just wanted to try it once to see how it works.' I said, 'I'm really glad that you did.'

TeenHollywood: Wasn't it easier to shoot this film in the real order it happened instead of jumping all over the place in the story as most films are shot?

Julia: For me it was a great luxury to shoot it in chronological order. I think it was almost a necessity of emotional evolution and you can't start any movie in Bali and then leave. So there's that. But I think it was important for us to create the steps that she took and understand very clearly how she got from one point to the next and one place to the next and how the relationships evolved and what she gleaned from each one to the next.

TeenHollywood: Liz has to learn how to pray or at least be comfortable with her spirituality. Have you reached that in your own life?

Julia: I think that if you've gotten to a place in your life where you have found a capacity to eat and nourish yourself in that way and love and nourish your life that somewhere along the way you've figured out your own identity and how to pray and relate to an energy or a creation that's more than you. Otherwise you can't accomplish those other things. How you do it and how you relate to it and what you name it, I think that becomes insignificant to the act of understanding it.