Julia Roberts Reveals Who Gets to See Her Without Makeup

Dec. 2, 2013 — -- In "August: Osage County," Julia Roberts puts on an Oscar-worthy performance as Barbara Weston, a woman separated from her husband who is dealing with her pill-popping mother (played by Meryl Streep) and trying to keep the family together after the apparent suicide of her father.

As one can imagine, Roberts' character doesn't coddle her daughter, who's played by Abigail Breslin, and F-bombs are dropped left and right. But Roberts, who has three children of her own -- twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 9, and son Henry, 6 -- said that kind of language isn't used around her house.

"It's not my brand of mothering," she told ABC News. "Barbara's version is very different from my version."

Read: Julia Roberts Talks About Being a Proud Mom, Avoiding the Internet

Roberts, 46, told ABC that even though she's an Oscar-winning actress, she is still a "mom who carpools."

"My older children are starting to understand a little bit more clearly what it is that I do for a living," she said. "They know it involves makeup, because it's the only time they see me with makeup on. They are starting to put it together, but it's a funny thing being an actor and having your kids understand what that means."

The "Pretty Woman" star said that her kids come first, so future movies have to fit into their schedule.

"Especially now, all three of my children are in school, so most things get dictated by the school schedule," she said. "Everything works out in the end."

See: Julia Roberts Through the Years

"August: Osage County" is "the first movie that I have made in 10 years that I was away from them, so that was particularly hard," Roberts said.

"And just as well, because honestly, they couldn't have visited this set very often," she said.

Visiting the set would have been hard for children, especially with scenes such as the one in which Roberts gets to tackle and take down Streep in a moment when her character had just had it with her mother's addiction and loud mouth. Roberts described what it was like to really give it to and get in the face of three-time Oscar winner Streep, who's 64.

"It had its pros and its cons. It was definitely terrifying to anticipate, but once we were doing it, it was so correct and it was so necessary for this powder keg that's bound to go off at some point that it was pretty gratifying," she said. "I was glad when it was over though."

"August: Osage County" hits theaters Dec. 25.