Julia Roberts Reveals MLK Was Involved In Her Birth
In a recent interview, Julia Roberts revealed that when she was born Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife Coretta paid her parents' hospital bill.
When it comes to actors finding their roots and discovering all of the many hurdles they had to overcome to achieve stardom in the entertainment industry, actor Julia Roberts may have the ultimate story to tell. A Georgia native and the daughter of acting teachers, Roberts revealed during an interview with Gayle King recently that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King were responsible for paying for the hospital bill after the actor was born. The Kings knew Walter and Betty Lou Roberts.
Coretta Scott King had enrolled their children in the acting school run by Julia Roberts’ parents, and the video interview posted to Twitter has become a viral sensation on other platforms like TikTok in recent days.
According to a report by Entertainment Weekly about Gayle King’s interview with Julia Roberts, the acting school in question was one of the only schools in the region at the time that was willing to accept King’s children due to the color of their skin. Gayle King noted that the idea that Black children were interacting with white students had a profound impact on Roberts, as she has become a welcoming person of all races and ethnicities. In an infamous moment while filming Sleeping with the Enemy in the South in the early 1990s, Roberts was caught saying that she believed a South Carolina community was “horribly racist” due to a restaurant in the town’s refusal to serve a Black friend of hers.
The comment resulted in a bit of controversy when the Pretty Woman star’s career was reaching its peak.
The interview between Gayle King and Julia Roberts was filmed in September as part of A+E Networks and the History Channel’s special, HISTORYTalks. The clip of the interview has found its way to social media since airing, particularly because Roberts is currently promoting her newest film, Ticket to Paradise, which costars George Clooney, Lucas Bravo, Kaitlyn Dever, Maxime Bouttier, and Billie Lourd. In conjunction with Roberts’ 55th birthday this last week, the cast is also currently celebrating the film’s debut in theaters.
Ticket to Paradise has currently grossed over $122 million against a budget of $60 million to make it one of the biggest hits worldwide of a non-franchise entry into theaters.
With a bonafide blockbuster romantic comedy hit at the box office, Julia Roberts is heading into her mid-fifties at the top of her game. The Smyrna, Georgia native is coming off of a successful run of the miniseries Gaslit and has recently wrapped production on Leave the World Behind, a family drama flick costarring Moon Knight actor Ethan Hawke and Footloose star Kevin Bacon. Roberts will next start filming the movie Little Bee, based on the novel of the same name by Chris Cleave.
Little Bee details the collision of a 16-tear-old Nigerian orphan and a British couple on vacation as they encounter one another years later.
