Why Julia Roberts Almost Turned Down Her Role in ‘Notting Hill’

It’s arduous to think about Notting Hill with out Julia Roberts, however the actress got here near turning down her now-beloved position.

“Honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie, playing a movie actress,” Roberts, 56, instructed screenplay author Richard Curtis in her February 2024 British Vogue cowl story, which was revealed on-line on Thursday, January 11. “I was so uncomfortable! I mean, we’ve talked about this so many times, but I almost didn’t take the part because it just seemed — oh, it just seemed so awkward. I didn’t even know how to play that person.”

The 1999 movie facilities across the love story of American actress Anna Scott (Roberts) and London bookstore proprietor William Thacker (performed by Hugh Grant). Throughout Notting Hill, Roberts was dressed fittingly as a film star — which she admitted she “loathed.”

For the long-lasting scene when Anna tells William, “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her,” Roberts’ character is seen in extra informal clothes, which Roberts truly wore in actual life on the day it was filmed.

“My driver, lovely Tommy, I sent him back to my flat that morning. I said, ‘Go into my bedroom and grab this, this and this out of my closet,’” Roberts recalled. “And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan.”

While Roberts knew that scene was “great,” she had no concept “that would become the line” that followers quote most frequently. Elsewhere in the interview, Curtis, 67, revealed that Roberts “insisted” on him altering the script for a scene the place her character mentions how a lot cash — a whopping $15 million — she made in one in every of her movies.

As for why she requested to vary that line to extend her character’s pay, Roberts merely stated, “Because I am a feminist.”

Notting Hill was met with super success and continues to be a go-to for rom-com lovers, however a sequel was by no means made. Grant, 63, beforehand joked that his casting in a possible follow-up movie would include a catch.

“I would like to do a sequel to one of my own romantic comedies that shows what happened after those films ended,” he stated by way of HBO’s Twitter web page in October 2020. “Really, to prove the terrible lie that they all were, that it was a happy ending.”

He continued, “I’d like to do me and Julia and the hideous divorce that’s ensued with really expensive lawyers, children involved in [a] tug of love, floods of tears. Psychologically scarred forever. I’d love to do that film.”