Julia Roberts Says Her Daughter Hazel Was Inspired to Give Up Her Phone After Watching Stand by Me at a Young Age

Julia Roberts’ daughter Hazel is appreciating the small things in life.

In an interview with The New York Times promoting her latest film, After the Hunt, Roberts, 57, recalled how the 1986 classic Stand by Me significantly impacted her daughter, Hazel, when she was younger.

Stand By Me is a coming-of-age movie directed by Rob Reiner, starring Jerry O’Connell, Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, and Corey Feldman as a group of friends in 1959 who go in search of a dead body.

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“I think people don’t realize how much they miss talking,” Roberts toldThe New York Times in an interview published Wednesday, Oct. 25. The actress and husband Danny Moder share 20-year-old twins Hazel and Phinnaeus as well as 18-year-old son Henry Daniel.

“For some reason, I was thinking this morning about when my kids were young and we showed them Stand by Me, and our daughter said to me, ‘I’m going to give you my phone.’ And I said, ‘OK. What do you want me to do with it?’ ” recalled Roberts.

The actress said her daughter told her at the time to “just keep it.”

” ‘ I don’t want it,’ ” Roberts recalled Hazel saying. ” ‘Seeing that movie, I just thought if those boys had phones, they wouldn’t be talking to each other like that. They wouldn’t have gone looking for that body, they wouldn’t sit around the fire and share these stories.’ ”

Roberts said that her daughter “could see how it was getting in the way of things.”

“All that’s to say, we love talking to each other and sometimes we forget how important it is,” the actress continued.

During an appearance on Today in 2023, Roberts revealed how she dealt with her kids’ technology use in the house when they were younger.

“We just had sort of simple rules where we had a charging station where everyone’s phones go when you get home. There’s no phones at the table, certainly,” she said.

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Although all her kids are now adults and out of the house, Roberts added at the time that she has an “immense amount of appreciation for both of my older kids because they still allow me to be the same mom to them and it’s not eye-rolling. There’s a huge amount of understanding.”