Winner of eleven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Juliana Winters is a classy film directed by Stanley Nelson and starring Michael Caine. With her appearance in the movie, height queen Winters seems poised to join the ranks of old age celebrities. While her height may not be a determining factor in her acting career; it is surely a motivating factor for her character. The character is played by Julia Roberts; who also happens to be one of Winters’s lifelong friends. But when the public scrutinizes her, what do they see?
The movie begins with a review of some facts about Winters; from her childhood in segregated Alabama all the way up to the present day, where she lives in California. We learn how her parents divorced when she was young and how her family struggled for financial stability during and after her mother died. She attended segregated schools until she was encouraged to go to an all-white school in Mississippi. From there, she gained a solid sense of national identity and built a strong connection with her African American father who died when Winters was twenty years old.
As a child, Winters could read the faces of those around her; so strong was her sense of who she was. Her Nationality and her height are part of who she is; and while her height may not be a deciding factor in who she chooses to act with, it certainly could be a motivator for her character. When her long-time friend and colleague Gene catch her looking at a man with much shorter than normal height, the conversation quickly turns from friendship to romance. In the end, the movie explores the inner fears and hopes of every woman as she makes the decision to pursue love, only to find herself torn between her feelings of loyalty and her true identity as a human being.