Emma Roberts arrested: Will it affect ‘We’re the Millers’?

In her upcoming movie “We’re the Millers,” Emma Roberts plays a street-wise toughie not afraid to mix it up, who then becomes part of a fake family that’s helping smuggle pot across the Mexican border.

That scrappiness takes on a new resonance in the wake of allegations of domestic violence against the actress. According to TMZ, Roberts was arrested in a Canadian hotel on July 7 after a guest reported a fight in a neighboring room and cops showed up to find Roberts’ boyfriend, actor Evan Peters, with a bloody nose and a bite mark, in the room with Roberts.

The 22-year-old actress is key to bringing in a younger demographic for Rawson Marshall Thurber’s “Millers,” an R-rated comedy starring Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston that opens the first week of August. Even if she maintains the same media schedule she did before the arrest, the Roberts incident (Peters did not press charges) is likely to be a distraction for some reporters who would otherwise be talking about the movie. And most actors don’t keep the same media schedule.

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After an early film career embodying teen sweetness in the likes of “Nancy Drew,” Roberts has gone to a more mature place over the last few years, starring as a fragile-but-gritty high-schooler in “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” a more duplicitous than you’d think girl-next-door in “Scream 4” and now the street kid of “Millers.”

How much do actors’ real-life woes affect their box-office perception? In some cases it can bounce right off. Christian Bale’s on-set rant to a cinematographer didn’t ding “Terminator: Salvation” even after the rant went viral, in part because much of the young male demographic that the movie was aimed at dug the freak-out. The Rupert Sanders-Kristen Stewart affair only seemed to help “Snow White and the Huntsman.”

Then again, there’s plenty of fallout when something like this happens right before a movie’s release. Stars keep a low profile, media forget about the film and audiences can be left with a bad taste. It’s hard to watch Roberts confronting street thugs on screen when that hotel image keeps lingering in one’s mind.

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