DR.MARTIN LUTHER KING AND CORETTA SCOTT KING PAID FOR THE BIRTH OF ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING WINNING ACTRESS JULIA ROBERTS
Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, paid the hospital bill for the birth of Julia Roberts, who later became an Academy Award-winning actress because Roberts’ parents were broke.
Julia Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia in 1967. And when her parents, Walter and Betty Roberts, couldn’t afford to pay the medical bill for her hospital delivery, the Kings stepped in, the actress said, “They helped us out of a jam.”
“The King family paid for my hospital bill,” Roberts said in footage of the A+E Networks and History Channel’s HISTORYTalks chat with the “CBS This Morning” host. Dr. King was murdered by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. Coretta Scott King died on January 30, 2006.
The “Pretty Woman” and “Erin Brockovich” star was born to actor-playwrights Walter and Betty Roberts, who were friends with the civil rights leaders. The Roberts founded and ran a theater school in Atlanta during the 1960s, and the King children attended the school at a time when it wasn’t common for Black children to be welcomed and included in community-based activities attended largely by White children.
Julia Roberts won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the biographical drama Erin Brockovich (2000).