Julia Roberts Cuts Gotham Awards Speech Speech for a Bathroom Break: Watch

Julia Roberts brought her star power to the Gotham Awards 2025, leaving the audience both dazzled and amused.

The 58-year-old actress attended the annual event with After the Hunt director Luca Guadagnino at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Monday, October 1. Roberts wowed the crowd in an oversized blue satin suit, paired effortlessly with black stilettos, allowing her wavy red hair to flow down her shoulders.

After strutting down the red carpet, Roberts and Guadagnino received the prestigious Visionary Tribute award during the ceremony. Their heartfelt honor was presented by Roberts’ friend Paul Rudd, before the duo took the stage to deliver a joint speech.

“I not only had a great privilege of acting with Luca, but I will be acting as his interpreter,” Roberts began, comically translating Guadagnino’s English speech into Italian for the audience.

Just when the crowd thought they could settle in for a lengthy oration, Roberts lightened the mood with a cheeky confession about her need for a quick break.

“I didn’t realize how long this was gonna go on and I didn’t regulate my water intake,” she quipped. “Paul, thank you for those kind words. Everyone that is here living their creative dreams, thank you for doing that in a world that seems to be crumbling. This is the tape and the glue that keeps it together. One of my great dreams was to work with Luca Guadagnino, and now that I’ve done it once I just wanna keep on doing it.”

The Gotham Awards committee announced before the ceremony that Roberts and Guadagnino would receive the Visionary Tribute for their collaboration in After the Hunt.

“The Gotham community has long cherished Luca Guadagnino’s emotionally expressive storytelling, and in After the Hunt, Julia Roberts delivers a luminous, monumental performance that deepens an already extraordinary career — guided by his singular direction behind one of the year’s most talked-about and provocative films,” said Jeffrey Sharp, Executive Director of The Gotham Film & Media Institute, in a statement.

Roberts, who portrayed Yale University professor Alma Imhoff in the psychological thriller, reflected on the honor, saying, “I could not have imagined collaborating on this project with anyone other than Luca Guadagnino.”

“To inhabit a character like Alma — so unrelenting, so burdened with secrets and unresolved trauma — one must be in complete concert with the director. With Luca, it was a continuous and unfolding joy. He understands human behavior in a unique and fascinating way and his attention to detail is unsurpassed. There is nothing that would make me happier than to broaden my life as an actor in continued collaboration with him.”

After the Hunt chronicles Alma’s internal conflict when she faces a personal and professional crossroads after a star pupil accuses one of her colleagues, threatening to unveil a dark secret from her past.

For Guadagnino, casting Roberts was effortless.

“I only cast the actors and actresses I fall in love with – a palpable emotion for them, anticipation and enthusiasm when I see them – my emotional confidence in them blends into chemistry. And now I love Julia Roberts,” he said. “She is everything. Julia Roberts is Cinema with a capital C.”

The director also praised Roberts for her role as Shelby Eatenton-Latcherie in Steel Magnolias, the film that first introduced him to her brilliance on screen.

“Even early in her career trusting her audience and inviting them into her story as Shelby,” he said. “Her light has never dimmed, only grown brighter, and after over four decades, dare I say more refined. I knew I would someday need to work with her.”

In addition to the Visionary Tribute, the Gotham Awards honored other stars that night. Jeremy Allen White and Scott Cooper received The Gotham Cultural Icon Tribute for Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, while Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman were celebrated with The Gotham Musical Tribute for Song Sung Blue.

Other honorees included Noah Baumbach for the Director Tribute for Jay Kelly, Tessa Thompson for the Spotlight Tribute for Hedda, and the Sinners cast for the Ensemble Tribute, while Frankenstein scored The Gotham Vanguard Tribute.