Julia Roberts shaded by ‘Shakespeare in Love’ producer for leaving film: ‘The problem was Julia’

nypost.com:

essay for Air Mail recently, noting that Universal Pictures would only pay for the film if Roberts was involved.Zwick then jetted off to London with Roberts so she could do chemistry reads with actors who were in the lead to play loverboy himself, William Shakespeare.The “Erin Brockovich” actress was desperate to star alongside Daniel Day-Lewis in the flick; however, the “My Left Foot” actor had already pledged to shoot 1993’s “In the Name of the Father.”Zwick recollected that Roberts had gushed to him about how “brilliant, handsome and intense” Day-Lewis was at the time. “Don’t you think he’d be perfect? … I can get him to do it,” Roberts reportedly told the producer.The “Mystic Pizza” star even asked her assistant to send two dozen roses to the “There Will Be Blood” star, along with a card that read: “Be my Romeo.”But once Day-Lewis had told Zwick and Roberts’ team that he was fully committed to “In the Name of the Father,” their chemistry read was canceled.Roberts still went through with the casting process, now having been paired with Ralph Fiennes. “Even as Ralph did his best to elicit the famous smile, Julia barely acknowledged him,” Zwick wrote. “I’m not suggesting she was deliberately sabotaging, but it was a disaster nonetheless,” he continued. “I tried to catch Ralph’s eye to apologize as he left but he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

After he was gone, I turned to Julia, awaiting her reaction. ‘He isn’t funny’ is all she said.”Ralph’s brother, Joseph Fiennes, would later win the role of the famed British playwright.

Other A-listers including Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Colin Firth, Sean Bean and Jeremy Northam also read with Roberts, but she “found fault with all of them.”Two weeks later, actor Paul.