Julia Roberts at Ashram Hari Mandir, where she was shooting for Eat, Pray, Love, on Tuesday. (PTI)

Julia Roberts, the Hollywood actress, has angered Hindu villagers in India who were barred from celebrating one of their most important religious festivals while she shot scenes from her new film in their temple.

Villagers hoping to celebrate the beginning of Navratri at Ashram Hari Mandir, close to Delhi, found their temple sealed by Roberts’s vast security team of 350 guards, bulletproof cars and a helicopter.

The irony that the Hollywood star was there to film Eat, Pray, Love, in which she portrays a woman hoping to find herself in Hindu spirituality, was lost on local devotees for whom the temple has always been open.

“Entry for devotees is barred. We were not allowed to enter and pray in the morning by the security. Only those who could manage to sneak in did so but most of us were all sent back. It’s Navratri and we must not be stopped from visiting a temple,” said Shakuntala Devi.

Another villager threatened to break in despite the security. “I am going to barge in for the evening aarti. Let’s see who stops me. What is it that they are shooting that we cannot even enter our own temple?” he asked.

A senior local police officer said no one would be allowed to breach the security cordon. “There are more than 100 policemen outside Ashram Hari Mandir and almost equal number inside the premises, both uniformed and in civilian disguise. Nobody can breach this cover and no outsider is allowed to enter the ashram, no matter whosoever he or she is. We have strict instructions,” he said.

Roberts, who is staying at Pataudi Palace, the family home of former Indian cricket captain Tiger Pataudi and his star son Saif Ali Khan, with her three children, is also being protected by 40 gunmen.

Until her arrival in India, Roberts had been considered one of the West’s most “Hindu-friendly” celebrities. She was publicly praised when she sported a bindi spot on her forehead during a visit to the Taj Mahal earlier this year.

Rajan Zed, of the Universal Society of Hinduism, said she had named her film company Red Om in honour of the Hindu word for God and the Universe.

In Eat, Pray, Love, the screen adaptation of the best-selling memoir by Elzabeth Gilbert, she plays the writer on her spiritual quest to find herself following a harrowing divorce by spending a year travelling through Italy, India and Indonesia.