It’s hard to imagine Notting Hill without Julia Roberts, but the actress came close to turning down her now-beloved role.
“Honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie, playing a movie actress,” Roberts, 56, told screenplay writer Richard Curtis in her February 2024 British Vogue cover story, which was published online on Thursday, January 11. “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.”
The 1999 film centers around the love story of American actress Anna Scott (Roberts) and London bookstore owner William Thacker (played by Hugh Grant). Throughout Notting Hill, Roberts was dressed fittingly as a movie star — which she admitted she “loathed.”
For the iconic scene when Anna tells William, “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her,” Roberts’ character is seen in more casual clothing, which Roberts actually wore in real life on the day it was filmed.
“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,’” Roberts recalled. “And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan.”
While Roberts knew that scene was “great,” she had no idea “that would become the line” that fans quote most often. Elsewhere in the interview, Curtis, 67, revealed that Roberts “insisted” on him changing the script for a scene where her character mentions how much money — a whopping $15 million — she made in one of her films.
As for why she asked to change that line to increase her character’s pay, Roberts simply said, “Because I am a feminist.”
Notting Hill was met with tremendous success and continues to be a go-to for rom-com lovers, but a sequel was never made. Grant, 63, previously joked that his casting in a potential follow-up film would come with a catch.
“I would like to do a sequel to one of my own romantic comedies that shows what happened after those films ended,” he said via HBO’s Twitter page in October 2020. “Really, to prove the terrible lie that they all were, that it was a happy ending.”
He continued, “I’d like to do me and Julia and the hideous divorce that’s ensued with really expensive lawyers, children involved in [a] tug of love, floods of tears. Psychologically scarred forever. I’d love to do that film.”
