The Many Lives of Eric Roberts
Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
Eric Roberts is a prolific actor whom you may recognize from one of his 800 plus film and TV credits. Roberts reflects on his storied career in his recent memoir titled Runaway Train: Or, the Story of My Life So Far, published in 2024. His career began with a leading role in the 1978 film “King of the Gypsies” for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also received a Golden Globe nomination for his role as Paul Snider in Bob Fosse's “Star 80” and his performance in “Runaway Train” earned him a third Golden Globe nod and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other notable films of Roberts’ include “The Pope of Greenwich Village” (1984), “The Coca-Cola Kid” (1985), “The Cable Guy” (1996), “Cecil B. Demented” (2000), “The Dark Knight” (2008), “The Expendables” (2010), “Lovelace” (2013), “Inherent Vice” (2014), and “Babylon” (2022). Eric Roberts has also appeared in notable television series such as the drama miniseries “In Cold Blood”, the sitcom “Less than Perfect”, NBC drama “Heroes”, CBS soap opera “The Young and the Restless”, the legal drama “Suits” (2014–2019), and the recent HBO series “The Righteous Gemstones”. When it comes to choosing work, Eric Roberts has a mantra: “just say yes”.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:06.2 | This is Alec Baldwin, |
| 0:08.0 | and you're listening to Here's the Thing from IHeart Radio. |
| 0:13.2 | With more than 800 film and television credits to his name, |
| 0:18.2 | Eric Roberts is one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood, and one of the |
| 0:23.5 | most misunderstood. Born into a family of actors and playwrights Roberts grew up in Atlanta, |
| 0:30.2 | Georgia. His parents co-founded one of the city's first integrated theater companies, the Atlanta |
| 0:36.3 | Actors and Writers Workshop. From the age of four, |
| 0:40.0 | Roberts performed in repertory theater. His two younger sisters were also child actors, one of whom |
| 0:46.4 | would go on to become one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Julia Roberts. Eric Roberts left |
| 0:53.8 | home at 18 to move to New York City. Just a few years |
| 0:58.3 | later, he was cast as the lead in Frank Pearson's 1978 film, King of the Gypsies. The performance |
| 1:05.9 | earned Roberts' first Golden Globe nomination and made him an international star. |
| 1:11.9 | He would go on to receive Golden Globe nominations for his performances in Bob Fosse's Star 80 |
| 1:18.0 | and an Academy Award nomination for Andrei Kanchilovsky's Runaway Train. |
| 1:23.7 | In September 2024, Eric Roberts published his memoir, |
| 1:28.3 | Runaway Train, or The Story of My Life So Far. |
| 1:32.5 | I was curious what it was like. |
| 1:34.7 | Growing up in a family where a theater wasn't just a passion, but a way of life. |
| 1:40.0 | I got out of school. |
| 1:42.2 | Actually, I didn't get asked back to school. Adada, the American Academy. I was in New York by this time. I didn't get asked back to be a senior. So I went across town and auditioned for the actress studio, got in, and so just dropped the American Academy out of my consciousness, |
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