Los Angeles, Oct 8 (NationPress) The illustrious Hollywood actress Julia Roberts has graced the big screen for close to four decades, yet she faced numerous challenges during the early stages of her career.

She received an Oscar for her portrayal of an environmental activist in ‘Erin Brockovich’, earning the affection of audiences and colleagues alike. Her co-star in ‘After the Hunt’, Andrew Garfield, even describes her as a “national treasure,” according to reports from ‘People’ magazine.

However, her journey wasn’t always smooth; like many, she had to navigate through humble beginnings. In an interview with ‘People’, she revealed, “I don't think I entered into my career with much confidence. I encountered early on, not a lot but a few critical people who were really cruel, and it was a really interesting challenge for me to decide the kind of person I wanted to strive to be.”

She further elaborated, “So it was so much more about who I wanted to be as opposed to what kind of career I wanted to have. And then I wanted to take the person that I wanted to build and put that person into these different situations of work life.”

According to ‘People’, she described her experiences between the ages of 15 to 25 as “more bumps than smooth sailing.”

She shared, “Of course, even then, I would have shreds of gratitude. I would think, ‘Okay, there's a reason why it has to be so hard’. Now I look at it as some of the lessons that I'm the most grateful for because they proved my endurance to myself. Being insecure can be crippling. So if someone embarrassed me, it stopped me. I was apoplectic, so learning to navigate that, because this is not an industry to be in if you can't take criticism or harshness or being embarrassed.”

As a child, she reminisced about staying up late to watch a trumpeter (whose name she couldn't recall) perform for talk-show host Johnny Carson on ‘The Tonight Show’.