Julia Roberts explains why she’ll never do a nude scene and has always refused

Erin Brockovich star Julia Roberts has opened up about her decision to avoid stripping off in movies - even if the plotline might lend itself to nudity.

Now 56 years old, Roberts has built out a wildly successful career that's seen her star in the likes of Notting Hill, My Best Friend's Wedding and more recently Leave The World Behind.

However, it was the 1990 movie Pretty Woman that really helped thrust her into the spotlight; a movie in which Roberts played a sex worker.

The rom-com features some steamy scenes, including one literally steamy scene with Roberts in a bathtub, but neither in that film or any since has Roberts actually appeared nude on camera.

The actor explained this decision in an interview with screenwriter Richard Curtis for British Vogue, where she was asked if she felt she had a 'responsibility to other women' while acting as such a popular star.

In response, Roberts said: "I think it would be more to the point that the things I choose not to do are representative of me."

Touchstone Pictures

She pointed to her 'G-rated career' as an example, adding: "Not to be criticising others’ choices, but for me to not take off my clothes in a movie or be vulnerable in physical ways is a choice that I guess I make for myself.

"But in effect, I’m choosing not to do something as opposed to choosing to do something."

Roberts went on to indicate that her decision might have stemmed from a wider part of who she is, as she discussed learning about her family tree with Dr Henry Gates of the show Finding Your Roots.

"One of the things he does at the very, very end is he tells you who they have discovered you are DNA cousins with," Roberts said.

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"I won’t even say, 'Can you guess who I’m DNA cousins with?' because there’s no telling what horrible person you would choose just to embarrass me in this interview, but I am DNA cousins with Gloria Steinem."

Steinem is a journalist and activist who is widely known as a leader of second-wave feminism in the US, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

When it comes to the future of her career, Roberts admitted she's 'not a far-sighted planner'.

She added: "I just see the expansion of the here and now, which obviously brings me an enormous amount of joy and fulfilment. And so it’s just the extrapolation of that, and what that means, and all of it and us going together into that."