Julia Roberts & Patricia Arquette Talk About Auditioning for 'Pretty Woman'

Julia Roberts and Patricia Arquette are on the cover of Variety‘s Actors on Actors issue, out now.

Here’s what the actresses had to say…

Julia, on her role in Pretty Woman, which Patricia also auditioned for: “I had no business being a movie like that, really. And I get the part. The studio that had it — this small movie company folded over the weekend — and by Monday, I didn’t have a job. So the script — there was one producer that stayed with the script — and then it went to Disney. And I thought, ‘went to Disney? Are they going to animate it? Like how does this become a Disney movie?’ And then when Gary Marshall came on, and I think because he’s a great human being, he met me just because I had once had the job and he felt it would only be fair to at least meet me since I had this job for three days and then lost it. And they changed the whole thing.”

Julia, on once being the highest paid actor in Hollywood and the glass ceiling: “It all seemed kind of ridiculous in a comical way. I thought, ‘Oh okay, sure. This is ridiculous, but I’ll be part of this party.’ And I feel like there are so many — particularly someone like Barbra Streisand, I think of, that I’m just walking in a path that she has hacked out with a machete. Um, so to be a little part of, you know, the gardener that’s picking some weeds that have come up since these incredible women before me have really made a path for all of us to be artists in our own right and to be able to pick and choose the things that we want to do and the way that we want to express ourselves as artists, it was nice to feel that I had a little puzzle piece to that.”

Patricia, on how she handles nude scenes and what might get her sued: “Maybe this is inappropriate, and maybe I could get sued for this someday now. But I said, ‘okay I’m about to take’ — we’re gonna roll — ‘I’m going to take off my robe. If I turn around and I see you, and I know you don’t need to be on this set, I’m going to come punch you in the face.’”

For more from Julia and Patricia, head to Variety.com.