IN her latest film, actress Julia Roberts plays a spinster schoolteacher who has spurned marriage in favour of her job.

Off screen, however, things couldn't be more different for the luminous star.

Despite rumours to the contrary Roberts insists she's still very much enjoying the honeymoon period with her husband of nearly two years, cameraman Danny Moder,

"I feel like my relationship is so happy and good and progressive," she says, flashing her famous megawatt smile. "I married a wise man and it's a joy being domestic. It's something I want and something that makes me very happy."

Roberts is enjoying married life so much she found it tough to play her latest role in the new film Mona Lisa Smile.

Set in the 1950s she stars as Katherine Watson, a free-spirited art teacher, at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, who tries hard to convince her young protegees that there's more to life than marriage and children.

"This was one of the paradoxes of playing my character because I was a newly-wed at the time," she reflects. "She's a woman who's not anti-marriage, but is deeply concerned that these girls will throw away so much to become housewives. It was a moment when the focus of my heart was being a housewife and I've kind of morphed into the other side of that coin."

The loved-up newlyweds even worked together on the set of Mona Lisa Smile, which was directed by British director Mike Newell of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame. But Roberts admits she was apprehensive about mixing work with pleasure.

"On the one hand it was great because he's such a great comfort to be around but there's also the feeling that you really want that person to be impressed and proud," she reasons.

But if Roberts wasn't sure about sharing screen time with her man, she was more than happy to be part of a stellar ensemble female cast, which included Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

"We all had great fun and had a very productive relationship," she says. "They are all pretty good at what they do and most of them have been at it for a while. It wasn't as if they sat around with their mouths agape saying, 'She's so cool'," she adds with a self-deprecating laugh.

It's a measure of just how much her priorities have shifted that these days the actress is content to let her younger co-stars take centre stage.

"I just don't feel pressure to prove myself anymore," she shrugs. "The best thing that you can hope for is to work with people that you like enough and respect so much that your purpose is to impress them or dazzle them in some way."

But then, the 36-year-old star can afford to change down a gear. Ever since she sashayed onto the scene in Pretty Woman, she's been stealing the show big time in a string of smash hit movies, such as Notting Hill, My Best Friend's Wedding, America's Sweethearts and Runaway Bride.

She's also proved she's more than a pretty woman by clinching an Oscar for her leading role in the 2000 movie Erin Brockovich and becoming one of the biggest bankable stars in screen history. Collectively, her films have grossed more than 2.5bn dollars worldwide

But modestly the star says she doesn't understand her phenomenal appeal.

"I'd do anything to avoid knowing what it is because then I'd become so aware of that thing," she says.