The actress revealed that Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King were friends with her parents.
Fans of Julia Roberts recently discovered a little-known fact about the Ticket to Paradise star!
Back in September, the 55-year-old actress shared the story of her birth with Gayle King for A+E Networks and History Channel's HISTORYTalks in Washington, D.C. The conversation went viral a month later when Zara Rahim, a former strategic adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted a clip in which Julia shared that her birth was paid for by none other than civil rights icons Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
After some coaxing, Julia shared that the King family stepped in when her parents, Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Grady Roberts, "couldn't afford to pay the hospital bill."
"The King family paid for my hospital bill...They helped us out of a jam," she added, explaining that her parents founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop and a children’s acting school, where the King children attended classes.
"One day, Coretta called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids," Julia told Gayle in the clip. "My mom was like, 'Sure, come on over,' and so they all just became friends."
When Betty Lou went into labor with Julia, Coretta insisted on paying the hospital bill as a thank you.
"In the '60s, you didn't have little Black children interacting with little white kids in acting school," Gayle noted. "And Julia's parents were welcoming, and I think that's extraordinary, and it lays the groundwork for who Julia is."
Julia infamously got in trouble in 1990 for calling the town of Abbeville, South Carolina, "horribly racist" and "a living hell" after her Black friend was refused service at a restaurant. The actress had moved to Abbeville to film Sleeping With the Enemy and was refreshingly candid describing her issues with the town during an interview with Rolling Stone.
Outraged by her comments, more than 100 residents of upstate South Carolina contributed money for an ad that appeared in Variety, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The ad appeared under the heading, "Pretty Woman? Pretty Low."
"Are there racists here?" the ad asked. "Perhaps some, as there are throughout the world. But they do not define us."
"I was born in the South, so in no way am I trying to create a stereotype," Julia said in a statement at the time. "I was shocked that this type of treatment still exists in America in the '90s -- in the South or anywhere else."
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