Martin Luther King Jr. Paid For The Birth Of One Of Hollywood’s Biggest Stars

Nobel Foundation

When Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King were living in Atlanta, their children were having a hard time. That’s when the King family contacted a local theater school and asked if their children could enroll.

At the time, in the 1960s, it was unusual for white children and black children to go to acting school together, but the white family that owned the acting school didn’t care. They invited the King children to join them.

Walter and Betty Lou Roberts were the owners of the theater school, and when Betty Lou was pregnant and went to the hospital to have a baby, they didn’t have enough money to pay the hospital bill. The King family appreciated the kindness and acceptance the Roberts family showed them, so they decided to help the Roberts family out and pay the hospital bill for them.

The baby that was born at the hospital grew up to become a famous actress, an A-list movie star. That baby was Julia Roberts.

Not many people know this fun fact about Roberts, that the King family paid for the hospital bill when she was born, but it is true. She even talked about it in an interview with Gayle King (who is not in any way related to Martin Luther King Jr.).

Twitter user Zara Rahim shared a video in which Roberts describe how it came to be that the King family paid for the hospital bill when she was born.

Many people commented on this tweet with their surprise at this little known fact about Roberts.