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, Roberts told Richard Curtis, the film’s screenwriter, that she hesitated to take the part for a shocking reason: The character was, like Roberts herself, a movie star.
On the outside, it might seem easy for an actor to play an actor. But Roberts didn’t see it that way, calling the movie “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
“I was so uncomfortable!” Roberts told Curtis. “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.”
Roberts 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,’” Roberts said. “And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan.”
Curtis couldn’t help but tease Roberts about her choices.
“I was always disappointed you weren’t wearing a better costume that day,” he joked.
Besides calling wardrobe audibles, Roberts also insisted that Curtis change her character’s response when another character asked her: “Last film you did, what did you get paid?”
Roberts told Curtis 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.”
Roberts had the perfect comeback: “Because I am a feminist.”