Julia Roberts Reveals Martin Luther King Jr. and Wife Coretta Scott King Paid the Hospital Bill for Her Birth: ‘They Helped Us’
usmagazine.comPaying it forward. Julia Roberts confirmed that Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill for her birth to help her parents.After a tweet noting that “Martin Luther King Jr paying for [Roberts’] birth is still a little known fact that sends me,” went viral earlier this month, consultant Zara Rahim shared a clip from the 55-year-old Oscar winner’s September interview with Gayle King on Friday, October 28. “Today is Julia Roberts birthday!
55 years ago MLK and Coretta Scott King paid for her parents hospital bill after she was born,” she added via Twitter. “Can’t stop thinking about this since I read it.
Here she is talking about it.”“My parents [Walter and Betty Lou Roberts] had a theater school in Atlanta called the Actors and Writers’ Workshop,” Roberts recalled during the interview. “And one day Coretta Scott King 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.” After the Mystic Pizza star’s parents accepted the King children into the program, they formed a close friendship with the late civil rights leaders, who were married for 15 years prior to the minister’s assassination.“We didn’t have the money to pay for [the hospital bills],” Roberts continued. “They helped us out of a jam.”The CBS News cohost, 67, added that the Roberts family’s friendship with the Kings was particularly significant due to segregation and racial inequality. “In the ’60s, you didn’t have little Black children interacting with little white kids in acting school,” Gayle explained. “And Julia’s parents were welcoming, and I think that’s extraordinary, and it lays the groundwork for who Julia is.”The Erin Brockovich star’s
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