Julia Roberts reveals she almost turned down her iconic role in ‘Notting Hill’

For over 30 years, Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts has been the Queen of Rom-Coms, America’s Sweetheart, and one of the biggest box-office draws in Hollywood. So she broke down the method to her madness in the February 2024 cover story for British Vogue.

Interviewed by her longtime friend, British screenwriter Richard Curtis (who penned her iconic turn in Notting Hill, among other classics like Four Weddings and a Funeral), the Erin Brockovich star reveals that she almost said no to starring in the rom-com that launched a thousand ships, Notting Hill.

“Honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie [Notting Hill], playing a movie actress,” she reveals to Curtis in the cover story. “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.”

She reveals that discomfort probably came from her feeling that in most of her parts, she doesn’t “feel like she’s playing herself.”

But that’s not the only secret she revealed about her time filming Notting Hill with Hugh Grant in London back in the '90s. That iconic scene in the bookstore where Julia delivers the legendary line, “I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her,” was filmed amidst a serious costume debacle.

Curtis remembers her “loathing” the movie star outfit that the costume department picked for her during that scene so Julia instead decided to just wear something from her own closet.

“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.’ And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan,” she reveals.

She also mentions that she had no idea that “I’m also just a girl…” line would become the long-lasting catchphrase that is has become in the 25 years since it was first delivered. “I mean, it was a great scene. But who knew that that would become the line,” she admits.

The chat between Roberts and Curtis goes to many different places, including the Pretty Woman star’s choice to never do nudity in any of her movies, even when playing the iconic sex worker opposite Richard Gere.

“You know, not to be criticizing others’ choices, but for me to not take off my clothes in a movie or be vulnerable in physical ways is a choice that I guess I make for myself,” she says, adding that her career has been pretty “G-Rated.”

That choice (and her assertion that women shouldn't be judged for choosing the opposite) might perhaps be influenced by her family relations. As she reveals to Curtis, during the taping of a recent episode of “Finding Your Roots” with Dr. Henry Gates, Julia found out that she is a DNA cousin to the famous feminist attorney and women’s movement advocate Gloria Steinem. “And I just want everybody to know that,” she gushes.

Later in the interview, she jokingly pledges her dedication to the feminist movement when recalling how she had Curtis change a line about her character's pay in Notting Hill so it would give her negotiating power in her next film. 

"I lowballed you but you insisted on me changing the script so that your price for your next movie would go up," he said. To which Julia replied, "Because I am a feminist.”

Their chat goes in many different directions, but perhaps one of the more interesting topics is the difference between Julia’s experience in the industry when she first started out in the '80s to how much more is required of actors now.

“Oh, it’s completely different from my time,” she says of making it in Hollywood today. “I mean, that’s when I really feel like a dinosaur, when you just look at the structure of the business. It’s completely different.”

She continues, “I don’t know if it’s better, because it’s not my experience, but it just seems very different. And in a way, it seems so cluttered. There are so many elements to being famous now, it just seems exhausting. Whereas I feel like, and again this is just my perception, because I don’t really know – I’m not a young person starting out in show business in the 21st century – but it seems to me that it was: you meet people, you read for parts, you try to get jobs, you get a job, you try to do a good job, and from that job, you might meet some new people who might suggest you to some other people and then you might get another job and you might get paid a little bit more for that job, and it might be a little bit of a better job. It kind of just made this sort of structural sense, and now it just seems more chaotic. There’s more elements, there’s more noise, there’s more outlets, there’s more stuff.”

Her chat also touches on her 20 year marriage to Danny Moder, her children entering university, her regrets about not pursuing higher education, and how she feels about her iconic smile in the face of aging. You can read her entire interview in British Vogue here.