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Julia Roberts’ daughter Hazel appreciates the little things in life.
In an interview with the New York Times to promote his latest film, After the Hunt, Roberts, 57, recalled how the 1986 classic Stand by Me had a huge impact on his daughter Hazel when she was young.
Stand by Me is a 1959 coming-of-age film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Jerry O’Connell, Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, and Corey Feldman about a group of friends who go looking for a dead body.
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“I don’t think people realize how much I miss speaking,” Roberts said in an interview with The New York Times published Wednesday, Oct. 25. The actress and her husband Danny Moder have 20-year-old twins Hazel and Finneus, and 18-year-old son Henry Daniel.
“For some reason, this morning I was thinking about when my kids were little, and I showed them ‘Stand by Me,’ and my daughter said to me, ‘I’ll give you your phone.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ So what do you want me to do? ”’ Roberts recalled.
The actress said at the time that her daughter told her to “leave it alone.”
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“‘I don’t need that,'” Roberts recalled Hazel saying. “I watched that movie and thought to myself, if those boys had cell phones, they wouldn’t be talking to each other like that. They wouldn’t be going looking for bodies, they wouldn’t be sitting around the fire sharing stories like this.”
Roberts said her daughter “could see how it was getting in the way of things.”
“I mean, we love talking to each other, but sometimes we forget how important it is,” the actress continued.
Appearing on Today in 2023, Roberts revealed how she coped with the use of technology in the house when her children were young.
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“We just set a simple rule that when we get home, everyone’s cell phones are left at the charging station. Certainly, there are no phones on the table,” she said.
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Although all of her children are now adults and have moved out, Roberts added at the time: “I have an immeasurable debt of gratitude to my older children because they allow me to still be the same mom. It’s no surprise. There’s so much understanding.”
