Now here are two names you wouldn’t expect to mention in the same sentence: Julia Roberts and Martin Luther King, Jr.
The 2001 Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for the movie Erin Brockovich, celebrated her birthday on Oct. 28, and a Twitter user shared a video of Roberts in conversation with Gayle King in honor of it.
In an interview for the History television network last month the actress shared that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill for her birth because her parents could not afford to.
King started, “Just wanted to take a step back for you, Julia, because you have two historical figures that I’ll bet most people don’t know this about you…”
“Let’s just start with the day you were born. Who paid for the hospital bill?”
Roberts complimented King on her research skills before answering:
“The King family paid for my hospital bill.”
Roberts revealed that her parents, Walter “Rob” Roberts and Betty Roberts, became friends with the civil rights leaders after Coretta called their theatre school to enroll her children. The actress said the activists could not find a place that would accept their Black children at the time.
King continued the interview, “Yeah because in the 60s you didn’t have little Black children interacting with little white kids in acting school and your parents were like come on in.”
“I think that’s extraordinary, and it sort of lays the groundwork for who you are.”
Not everyone agreed with the Roberts family’s decisions. Philip DePoy wrote in an essay for Arts ATL, “I kissed a girl, and 10 yards away a Buick exploded,” explaining that the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) blew up a car in front of the theatre
when he—a Caucasian man—kissed Yolanda King, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta as part of a workshop in the theatre’s parking lot.Roberts is best known for her roles in Steel Magnolias (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), and Eat Pray Love (2010).