Five Fun Facts About Julia Roberts and the Making of Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love, the new movie starring Julia Roberts, based on the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, opens in theaters on August 13, 2010. The book is a tribute to the importance of self-discovery, and no doubt the film will be as well. In that spirit of discovery, here are five fun facts I've discovered about the star and the making of the film:

1. Julia Roberts gained as much as ten pounds while filming Eat Pray Love

Roberts told Entertainment Weekly that she ate humongous amounts of pizza while they were shooting in Naples. She gained somewhere between seven and ten pounds. Roberts and the film's director, Ryan Murphy, thought it would look more realistic if the character gained weight during the course of the story.

2. There's more to life than pizza

After doing publicity for the film in California's Napa Valley, Roberts and 20 other members of the cast and crew had dinner at the ultra-chic French Laundry restaurant. Grub Steet San Francisco reports they ate oysters, caviar, tomato tart, macaroni and cheese (not Kraft -- we're talking hand-made pasta here!), calotte de boeuf grillée, halibut, peach cobbler, mango sorbet, goat's milk mousse, honey-glazed plums, doughnuts, coffee, and California wines, at the end of which they probably all gained another ten pounds each.

3. Police guarded the star with bamboo sticks

For the segment of the movie shot in India, they were filming in a tiny village. The villagers climbed up trees and roofs, trying to get a glimpse of Roberts. Several dozen policemen, armed with bamboo sticks, and security guards kept the curious onlookers from getting too close.

4. Roberts brought her family with her when she was making Eat Pray Love

Filming Eat Pray Love meant traveling around the world for two months, and Roberts brought her husband, her 5-year-old twins, and her 3-year-old with her. She told Access Hollywood that she and her husband called the trip the "World Pool Tour," because wherever they went, they looked for a place where their kids could play in the water

5. Roberts and her Eat Pray Love director will make another film together

The head of Sony Pictures was said to be so impressed with how well Julia Roberts and director Ryan Murphy (co-creator of Glee) worked together on Eat Pray Love that the studio paid Murphy five million dollars to write and direct another movie starring Roberts. The as-yet untitled film will be a romantic comedy about a working wife and a stay-at-home husband switching roles. Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner will co-produce.

Sources

IMDB, Eat Pray Love
Popwatch at EW.com, This week's cover: 'Eat Pray Love' star Julia Roberts dishes on scarfing pizza
Grub Street San Francisco, See what Julia Roberts and the Eat.Pray.Love gang at at French Laundry last night
Access Hollywood, Tight security in Julia Roberts' 'Eat Pray Love' film set in India
Access Hollywood, Julia Roberts on managing family & work on 'Eat Pray Love' set
Deadline New York, Ryan Murphy scores $5M to re-team with Julia Roberts on Sony Pictures film