I’m a practising Hindu, says Julia Roberts

LONDON - Oscar winning Hollywood star Julia Roberts says she is a “practising Hindu” after she shot for the film “Eat, Pray and Love” in India and regularly goes to temples to “chant and pray and celebrate” with her family.

Roberts, 42, who won a legion of fans after she essayed the role of a prostitute in “Pretty Woman”, said: “I’m definitely a practising Hindu. Golly, I’ve been so spoiled with my friends and family in this life.”

The actress said she goes to temples with her three children - Hazel, Phinnaeus and Henry - and husband cameraman Daniel Moder, reports dailymail.co.uk.

Roberts, who was born to a Baptist and Catholic couple in the US, hopes to be reincarnated as “something quiet” after the stress of her celebrity lifestyle.

“Next time I want to be just something quiet and supporting,” she is quoted as saying.

In “Eat, Pray and Love”, Roberts plays a woman hoping to find herself through Hindu spirituality.

It is a big screen adaptation of the bestselling memoir of the same name by Elizabeth Gilbert. Roberts plays a recently-divorced woman travelling the world trying to find herself. The character visits Italy for food, India for spirituality and Bali, where she finds love.

The actress caused controversy in India last September when locals were barred from celebrating an important Hindu religious festival while she shot scenes for the film in their temple on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Villagers hoping to mark the beginning of Navratri, nine days of worship of their Goddess Durga, at Ashram Hari Mandir in Haryana, found their temple sealed by Roberts’s vast security team of 350 guards, bulletproof cars and a helicopter.

One of Julia’s biggest ever box office hits was “Pretty Woman” in which she landed the female lead opposite Richard Gere.