Domestic Goddess.(Julia Roberts)(Interview)

Byline: PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHAEL THOMPSON By Brooke Hauser

Julia Roberts may love being a wife and a mother, but the Oscar-winning actress is more than ready to get back to work.

An etiquette refresher: Never, ever ask a woman when she is due. Especially when that woman is Julia Roberts, and she has just given birth to her third child, Henry. Pity the fool working on the set of Roberts's new thriller, Duplicity, who asked the Most Famous Actress in the World the Dumbest Question of All Time.

"Just when you think you're getting your shit together, someone says, 'When is your baby due?' I had Henry on my hip, and it was like, 'This is my baby,'" Roberts says flatly. "It hurt my feelings so bad! I think the second-meanest thing you can say to somebody is 'You look tired.' Why do people say that? Just tell me I look like a mom! Don't tell me I look tired."

Far from it. Wearing jeans and a black sweater, with her blonde hair swept off her face, Roberts looks positively relaxed when we meet near her home in Malibu at the spiritual oasis known as the Lake Shrine Self-Realization Fellowship Temple and Ashram Center, ten acres complete with artificial waterfalls and a white hilltop temple. If the name of the place sounds a bit lofty, it's also apt: At 41, Roberts has done her share of realizing and reconciling her different selves as a mother of three (twins Hazel and Finn are four; Henry is almost two), wife to cameraman Danny Moder, and movie star. After taking some time off to be with her family, Roberts is back in the spotlight with two films: the family drama Fireflies in the Garden, and Duplicity, in which she and Closer costar Clive Owen reteam, this time as corporate spies with a steamy past.

For someone who is so famous, and famously private, Roberts is surprisingly unguarded on this misty afternoon, going out of her way to make small talk with strangers. When a New Agey woman walks by carrying a snake, Roberts whips out her cell phone to take her picture, saying, "You are a rock star!" Then there is the little blonde girl who momentarily wanders away from her sitter to stare at some ducks sunning in the lakeand who will never know that the most famous actress in the world once taught her how to quack. Here, Roberts sounds off on men, money, and being over being America's sweetheart.

JR: How is your ass holding up on this bench?