Emma Roberts looked like any typical underfed, sunglasses-wearing starlet when she was snapped by paparazzi while out in Beverly Hills in mid-July.
Except for her bandaged arm and the collage of bruises and scrapes decorating her spindly legs — all courtesy of a massive blowout that had led to the actress’s arrest earlier that month.
It’s a new and different look for the 22-year-old former Nickelodeon star, perhaps best known for being Julia Roberts’ niece and for projecting the same wholesome “America’s sweetheart” image as her aunt.
“I mean, I’m sure everyone can say this, but a lot of people perceive me different from how I actually am,” Roberts told Nylon magazine in an interview in the weeks before she was cuffed.
No kidding.
Emma Roberts and boyfriend Evan Peters have been known for their excessive PDA, as shown here on the streets of NYC in May 2013. (Allan Bregg / Splash News)
Cutie Emma Roberts at 13, with her dad Eric Roberts and Eliza Roberts. (Gregg DeGuireWireImage)
Back in 2010, Emma Roberts mimicked her Aunt Julia’s dazzling style at the Hollywood premiere of their film “Valentine’s Day.” (WireImage)
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Roberts was once casually lumped in with the can-do-no-wrong “Emmas” of Hollywood: Emma Stone and Emma Watson.
As a child, her mother distanced her from her bad-boy father, Eric Roberts, by moving her to California, although she stayed tight with her dad’s sister, Julia. The press never reported any wild escapades — just her penchant for reading and knitting. In other words, Roberts was, well, boring.
But ever since July 7, when the “Nancy Drew” star was arrested in Montreal on domestic violence charges after an altercation with her actor boyfriend, Evan Peters, industry insiders are wondering whether Roberts’ good-girl image is nothing more than a façade.
Rumors of her partying ways have been circulating around Hollywood for years. Tack on an arrest and an attempt to cut the famed Cronut line in Soho, as reported by Page Six earlier this month, and Roberts appears to be a few credits shy of graduating from the Lindsay Lohan School of Career Suicide.
How did the actress — so pure and scrubbed that she was tapped as the face of Neutrogena in 2009 — come to resemble the misbehaving celebs she once publicly pooh-poohed?
“There’s not a lot of original ways to get attention in the press,” she told USA Today in 2009. “Everyone has used up all the good ones — DUI, eating disorders, getting pregnant.”
Luckily for Roberts, allegedly biting your beau and giving him a bloody nose didn’t make the list.
On that July night in Montreal, hotel guests called police after a fight broke out in Roberts and Peters’ hotel room. When cops arrived, 26-year-old Peters, famed for the TV show “American Horror Story,” was allegedly battered, bloodied and bitten. Roberts, who also sustained injuries, was arrested on the spot and taken into custody early July 7. She was released from jail several hours later, as Peters decided not to press charges.
“That whole thing seems ridiculous to me,” Roberts’ friend, celebrity portrait artist Tyler Shields, tells The Post. He photographed the couple for his “Suspense” series, which was exhibited in Los Angeles in April.
“I just know her. And I know him. And I know them. I don’t know how that happened. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” he says.
“It was an unfortunate incident and misunderstanding,” a rep for the couple told Us Weekly when the arrest went public. “Ms. Roberts was released after questioning, and the couple are working together to move past it.”
They might be moving on (Roberts was photographed crying on Peters’ shoulder outside a New Orleans studio on July 16, the very same day the media caught wind of the mishap), but Hollywood is wondering whether Roberts’ image is bruised beyond repair.
One publicist admitted to removing Roberts from her firm’s gifting list after news of the arrest broke.
“After someone’s been arrested, we just don’t want to associate the brand with them,” the publicist explains, adding that the incident didn’t get the coverage it deserved because no one wants to risk upsetting Emma’s aunt, the prettiest woman of them all.
“Basically, the weeklies don’t want to have a bad relationship with her because Julia Roberts will never speak to them again if they slam her niece” — also one of the reasons the publicist asked to remain anonymous.
Which might explain why people have kept relatively mum on Roberts’ alleged partying habits.
A source who works at a high-powered gossip site said she was shocked to see paparazzi footage of Roberts exiting LA clubs night after night for the past two years with her party posse, including actress and gossip-page fixture Ashley Benson.
“I always thought of her as a nice, stay-at-home type. And then I see that she’s out clubbing every night,” says the source.
According to the source — who asked to remain nameless to avoid jeopardizing her job by leaking info to The Post — Roberts, who stars alongside Jennifer Aniston in this summer’s release “We’re the Millers,” supposedly “spent the whole night in the bathroom” at a party in LA last year attended by Lana Del Ray and Lindsay Lohan.
The publicist, who has worked with Roberts on multiple occasions, isn’t surprised.
She says Roberts chain-smokes and drinks with the best of them.
“She doesn’t like having her picture taken when she’s wasted, and she’s usually wasted at events,” the flack says.
Another source, who sat near the starlet at an A-list fashion dinner in late May in Los Angeles, says she’s “far from little miss perfect.
“She doesn’t eat anything and just sort of pretends to be this little ingénue,” he says, asking to remain anonymous for professional reasons. “But she’s definitely more rowdy and provocative than I expected.”
He says an antsy Roberts left dinner early because she wasn’t feeling well. A few hours later, she was partying at the Chateau Marmont.
“She has a harder edge than you would imagine,” adds an insider who knows Roberts professionally and didn’t want her name used, should she work with Roberts again.
She ran into the actress and her ex-boyfriend, actor Alex Pettyfer, at the J.Crew in East Hampton last summer.
“Alex asked her, ‘How do you like this sweater?’ And she said, ‘I love it if you’re gay.’ ”
It’s easy to speculate whether the starlet is primed to take after her father, Eric, a famously troubled actor who has battled addictions for years. He was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana and for resisting arrest after he tried to assault a New York police officer in 1987. In February 1995, he was arrested again for shoving his wife and Roberts’ stepmom, Eliza Garrett, and in 2010, he appeared on VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab” for his dependency on medical marijuana.
From the outside, at least, Roberts’ life seemed to have an idyllic start.
She lived with her father and her schoolteacher mother, Kelly Cunningham, in a charming green house overlooking the Hudson River in Rhinecliff, NY, with cherubs painted on her bedroom ceiling, according to the home’s current owner, who purchased the house from Eric in 2002. (Kelly and Eric were never married.)
Cunningham left Roberts’ father when the future star was a young child and moved them both to LA. There, Roberts caught the acting bug. In 2004, at age 13, she got her big break in the Nickelodeon series “Unfabulous,” eventually moving on to family-friendly films like 2007’s “Nancy Drew” and 2009’s “Hotel for Dogs.” In 2010, she appeared in the romantic comedy “Valentine’s Day,” in which her aunt starred, and played the lead in 2011’s “Scream 4.”
But her team isn’t in panic mode yet, according to the insider.
“They’re definitely at a place where they are still turning down decent money offers for fashion and beauty and appearances,” she says, adding, “[The arrest] could be a one-time thing that flared up. They’re telling her, ‘Look, you keep this up, you’ll never have a career.’ ”
Roberts’ publicist did seem a bit panicked, however, when she learned that The Post was writing a story about her client’s recent arrest and party habits.
Roberts’ flack, Christine Tripicchio, called the paper in a fury about the “unauthorized profile,” spewing vulgarities and threats.
“She is not a celebrity — she is an actress!” Tripicchio screamed. “Are you f - - king kidding me? You need to decide whose team you’re on . . . I pity you!”
On the upside, Roberts had the good sense (and foresight) to apologize for any potential indiscretions, well in advance of her arrest.
As she told Nylon: “I can’t say I’m never going to mess up, but if I do, I’ll definitely be very sorry.”
We bet.
dschuster@nypost.com