50 Fun Facts About Julia Roberts

Roberts was born in 1967 in which city's metropolitan area?

Atlanta is where her parents founded a racially integrated theatre workshop in the 1960s, and after it closed and they divorced her mother moved the girls out to the suburbs.

Who paid the Roberts family's hospital bill when Julia was born?

Coretta Scott King and her husband Martin Luther King Jr. settled the bill the Robertses could not afford, a thank-you for taking the King children into their acting school when others would not.

Roberts grew up in which Georgia town, the old Greek name for Izmir?

Smyrna is where her mother settled with Julia and her sister after the divorce, while her father and brother stayed in the city, and she graduated from Campbell High there.

What did Roberts want to be when she was a child?

A veterinarian was her childhood ambition, but as a teenager she watched her brother Eric make it as an actor and followed him to New York straight after high school.

Which Pretty Woman moment was a prank on Roberts that made her laugh for real?

The jewellery box snapping shut on her fingers was a joke meant for the gag reel and played without telling her, and the laugh it surprised out of her was too good to cut.

In Notting Hill, Roberts's film star falls for a man who runs what kind of London shop?

A travel bookshop is where she wanders in to buy a book, but the two only get talking when he bumps into her in the street and spills orange juice all over her.

In Satisfaction (1988), her first credited film part, Roberts played what?

A bass guitarist in an all-girl rock band was the part, but it was not quite her first film, because she had already slipped by in a nonspeaking role in Firehouse the year before.

In Mystic Pizza's Connecticut fishing town, Roberts's waitress belongs to which community?

Portuguese-American families are the year-round locals of the film's Mystic, and Roger Ebert guessed it would one day be known for the stars it showcased before they were stars.

In Steel Magnolias, Roberts's young bride suffers from which condition?

Diabetes was no plot device, because Robert Harling wrote the story after complications of the disease killed his sister Susan in 1985, and he turned her into Shelby.

Pretty Woman began as a dark drama called 3,000, which ended with Vivian and her friend on a bus to where?

Disneyland was the bleak last stop of a script with no happy ending, until Disney's own studio reworked it into the fairy tale that reached the screen.

Accepting her Oscar in 2001, Roberts refused to hurry because she already owned which prize, offered for the night's shortest speech?

A television went to the shortest speech, so she said she had one, then told the conductor he was too quick with that stick and should sit down, because she might never be there again.

Who directed Roberts in both Flatliners (1990) and Dying Young (1991)?

Joel Schumacher's Flatliners cast her beside Kiefer Sutherland, who became her fiancé, and their wedding was called off in 1991, the year she made Dying Young for the same director.

How does Roberts's wife escape her husband in Sleeping with the Enemy?

A faked drowning frees her for a new life in Iowa, though Roger Ebert grumbled that the husband finds her so easily she might as well have mailed him a change-of-address card.

Which character did Roberts play in Steven Spielberg's Hook?

Tinker Bell has to fly a grown-up Peter back to Neverland because he cannot remember ever being Pan, and Roger Ebert thought Roberts played the fairy more as a duty than a pleasure.

During her early-1990s hiatus, Roberts's only film role was a cameo in which Altman satire of Hollywood?

The Player saves its last joke for her: a bleak drama pitched with no stars and no happy ending reaches the screen with Roberts in the lead, rescued at the last second.

Who co-starred with Roberts in the John Grisham thriller The Pelican Brief (1993)?

Denzel Washington plays the newspaper reporter her law student turns to when her theory about the murders of two Supreme Court justices proves right enough to get her hunted.

What is the profession of Roberts's character in My Best Friend's Wedding?

Food critic is her job in the opening scene, where a frantic kitchen sweats over her plate and the chef barking the orders is Chicago's Charlie Trotter, playing himself.

Roberts played a Justice Department attorney opposite which actor in Conspiracy Theory (1997)?

Mel Gibson plays a New York cabbie who once saved her from a mugging and now pesters her with conspiracy theories, which she humours until one of them turns out to be right.

Which Sesame Street character tried to scare Roberts in a sketch?

Elmo sets out to frighten her so the two of them can show young viewers what being afraid looks like, and the show still posts the sketch online as Elmo Scares Julia Roberts.

Who played the terminally ill mother opposite Roberts in Stepmom (1998)?

Susan Sarandon plays the ex-wife who cannot stand her children's stepmother-to-be, until bad news from her doctor shows her she must help the younger woman take her place.

Mistaken for a journalist at Roberts's Notting Hill press junket, Hugh Grant's character claims to write for which magazine?

Horse & Hound is the magazine he names when he is taken for a reporter, and the bluff leaves him stumbling through interviews with the star and the rest of her cast.

Runaway Bride (1999) reunited Roberts with Richard Gere and which director?

Garry Marshall had directed the pair in Pretty Woman nine years earlier, and this time Gere is a newspaper columnist writing about a woman who keeps bolting from the altar.

Roberts's Emmy-nominated Law & Order guest spot paired her with which actor, then her boyfriend?

Benjamin Bratt played the show's Detective Rey Curtis, and she thanked him by name from the Oscar stage in March 2001, only for the couple to part within months.

With Erin Brockovich, Roberts became the first actress paid what fee for a single film?

$20 million was the largest salary yet paid to a screen actress, and that December the Hollywood Reporter put her on its women's power list, which rarely named performers, because her name alone could get a film financed.

In Erin Brockovich (2000), Roberts's legal clerk builds a pollution case against which company?

PG&E, short for Pacific Gas and Electric, had polluted a small town's groundwater, and the case Brockovich pieced together from the files cost the utility a $333 million settlement.

Which star plays Roberts's hapless boyfriend, sent to fetch an antique pistol, in the 2001 comedy The Mexican?

Brad Pitt and Roberts share top billing but are kept apart for most of the film, because she is kidnapped on her way to Las Vegas while he is off bungling the errand.

In America's Sweethearts, Roberts plays the sister and assistant of a star played by whom?

Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Gwen, a vain film star who uses her sister as a go-between with the co-star she has dumped, never noticing that the sister is in love with him.

In Ocean's Eleven, Roberts plays Danny's ex-wife Tess, who has taken up with which man?

The casino owner he robs is her new man, which is why Rusty, once he finds out, begs Danny to tell him the heist is not about her, and of course it is.

In which film does Roberts's 1950s Wellesley teacher urge her students to want more than marriage?

Mona Lisa Smile sends her to Wellesley in 1953, where the students can already identify every painting in her first lecture, so she hits back with a blast of modern art.

Roberts got her Closer role when Cate Blanchett withdrew for what reason?

A pregnancy made Blanchett bow out in September 2003 before filming began, and within a week Roberts was in talks to play Anna, the American photographer.

In which film does Roberts's character pose as the real Julia Roberts?

Ocean's Twelve has Tess pretend to be the real actress so the gang can get near a Fabergé egg on show in Rome, until Bruce Willis, playing himself, happens to turn up.

In Eat Pray Love, Roberts's divorced writer eats in Italy, prays in India and finds love on which island?

Bali is where Felipe, played by Javier Bardem, drives into her bicycle, and the accident that leaves her with a badly cut leg is how she meets the man she falls for.

How did Roberts's 2006 Broadway debut, Three Days of Rain, fare?

Poor reviews, packed houses: the New York Post's critic wrote that he hated the play and even hated her, yet the limited run was the most coveted ticket in town.

In Charlie Wilson's War, Roberts's Houston socialite pushes a Texas congressman to arm Cold War rebels in which country?

Afghanistan is the cause she presses on Charlie Wilson, and because America cannot be seen to supply them, the rebels get Soviet-made weapons from Israel by way of Pakistan.

Roberts played a CIA agent running a con opposite which actor in Duplicity (2009)?

Clive Owen, her sparring partner from Closer, plays the MI6 man whose secret documents she steals on the night they meet in Dubai, years before the two spies go into business together.

Who directed Roberts and himself in the 2011 comedy Larry Crowne?

Tom Hanks also produced it and wrote it with Nia Vardalos, playing a man fired from his retail job who enrols at community college, where Roberts teaches his public speaking class.

In which comic 2012 retelling did Roberts play Snow White's vain, debt-ridden stepmother?

Mirror Mirror plays the tale for laughs, with Roberts as a Queen who has taxed her kingdom dry and, finding herself broke, sets out to marry the rich young prince.

Roberts earned her fourth Oscar nomination as Meryl Streep's daughter in which film?

August: Osage County cast her as Barbara, who comes home to Oklahoma when her father goes missing and has to face the pill-addicted mother played by Streep.

Roberts played Dr. Emma Brookner, a physician during the AIDS crisis, in which HBO film?

The Normal Heart, Ryan Murphy's film of Larry Kramer's play, follows the activist Ned Weeks, played by Mark Ruffalo, whom her doctor enlists to raise the alarm, and the part brought her an Emmy nomination.

Homecoming, Roberts's first regular TV series, premiered in 2018 on which platform?

Amazon's thriller casts her as a caseworker easing soldiers back into civilian life, then jumps four years on to find her waiting tables with no memory of the job.

In Gaslit, Roberts played which Watergate figure, the wife of Nixon's attorney general?

Martha Mitchell talked so freely to reporters that, by her account, she was held in a California hotel room and sedated days after the break-in to keep her quiet.

Which couple's company, Higher Ground, executive produced Roberts's 2023 thriller Leave the World Behind?

Barack and Michelle Obama's company came aboard in 2022, for a thriller in which a family's Long Island getaway is upset when the house's owner turns up at night seeking shelter from a blackout.

Roberts's production company Red Om takes its name from what?

Her husband's surname backwards is what Red Om spells: she renamed Shoelace Productions for Danny Moder, whom she married in 2002.

Which French beauty brand had a Roberts advert banned in Britain for airbrushing?

Lancôme, whose global face she was, lost the 2011 ruling after an MP complained, and the watchdog was never allowed to see the unretouched photograph.

Which country singer did Roberts marry in 1993?

Lyle Lovett married her after only about three weeks of dating, and the marriage lasted less than two years.

Roberts met her husband on the set of The Mexican, where he was working as what?

A cameraman on that film's crew, he married her at midnight as the Fourth of July 2002 began, before guests who had come to her New Mexico ranch for a holiday party.

In a 2010 magazine interview, Roberts revealed that she practises which religion?

Hinduism was a long way from her upbringing by a Baptist father and a Catholic mother, and the news came out just as she opened in Eat Pray Love, playing a woman who seeks peace at an Indian ashram.

Which magazine has put Roberts top of its annual beauty list a record five times?

People made her its fifth-time cover in 2017, and she joked that she would mention it in her Christmas card to George Clooney, only twice the magazine's Sexiest Man Alive.

How did Roberts learn Edward Norton is her distant cousin?

A TV show, Finding Your Roots, compared their DNA and found a long identical stretch on the ninth chromosome, and Roberts said she had met Norton but never worked with him.

Which habit links Roberts's 1993 wedding and her 2016 Cannes red carpet walk?

Going barefoot is how she married in 1993, and at Cannes she slipped off her heels to climb the steps a year after the festival turned women away for wearing flat shoes.