This year marks the 25th anniversary of the classic romantic comedy Notting Hill ― in which, it turns out, Julia Roberts almost didn’t star.
In the latest issue of British Vogue, Julia told filmmaker Richard Curtis, who wrote Notting Hill, that she hesitated to take the part for a shocking reason: The character was, like Julia herself, a movie star.
On the outside, it might seem easy for an actor to play an actor. But Julia didn’t see it that way, calling the movie “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do”.
“I was so uncomfortable!” she recalled. “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.”
Julia says she especially “loathed being dressed as a movie star,” so she made a personal choice in the famous scene where her character tells bookstore owner Hugh Grant that she’s “just a girl, standing in front of a boy.”
Instead of wearing the clothes picked out by the wardrobe department, she had her driver go back to where she was staying and grab various pieces of apparel from her bedroom.
“I said, ‘Go into my bedroom and grab this, this and this out of my closet,’” Julia revealed. “And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan.”
Richard couldn’t help but tease Julia about her choices, joking: “I was always disappointed you weren’t wearing a better costume that day.”
Besides calling wardrobe audibles, Julia also insisted that Richard change her character’s response when another character asked her: “Last film you did, what did you get paid?”
Julia told Richard she remembered his script “lowballed my answer,” to which he replied: “I lowballed you but you insisted on me changing the script so that your price for your next movie would go up.”
Julia had the perfect comeback: “Because I am a feminist.”
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