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Here's why Martin Luther King Jr allegedly paid hospital bill for Julia Roberts' birth

Julia Roberts' parents became friends with Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta after they helped the couple's children join their theater school

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA: Julia Roberts claimed that Martin Luther King Jr and his wife, Coretta, paid for her hospital bill during her birth as her parents could not afford it, in an interview of the actress with Gayle King. A clip of the interview has gone viral as the actress turned 55 on Saturday, October 29. 

 The 'Erin Brockovich' star explained how her parents became friends with the Civil Rights legend and his family. According to Page Six, she said, “My parents had a theater school in Atlanta called the Actors and Writers Workshop, and one day Coretta called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids."

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“My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over,’ and so they all just became friends, and they helped us out of a jam," the actress continued. According to Page Six, there was an incident when a Ku Klux Klan member blew up a car outside one of the plays in response to King's daughter Yolanda being cast in a role where she had to kiss a white actor. The actress reportedly stated that her parents' decision was “extraordinary” because people didn’t see “little black children interacting with little white kids in acting school” at the time. Zara Rahim, popular producer tweeted, "Today is Julia Roberts birthday! 55 years ago MLK and Coretta Scott King paid for her parents hospital bill after she was born. Can’t stop thinking about this since I read it. Here she is talking about it with @GayleKing."

Meanwhile, Roberts posted on Instagram with the caption,"Feeling the love and magic on my 55th Birthday! My cup runneth over," with a picture that shows her sipping from a coffee mug while surrounded by birthday balloons. 

Earlier in October, Roberts was also in the news as Mathew Perry revealed why he broke up with her after dating for a year between 1995 to 1996. He said, "Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts. She might have considered herself slumming it with a TV guy, and TV guy was now breaking up with her. I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face."

However, the actress also spoke about her personal life in an interview with CBS Sunday morning, “When I’m not working, [being a homemaker] is my full-time job. It isn’t rainbows and kittens every day, but it does bring me a lot of joy.It’s just never consumed me, being an actor. It is my dream come true, but it is not my only dream come true. The life that I have built with my husband, [and] the life that we’ve built with our children, that’s the best stuff. To come home at the end of the day, triumphantly, to them," reported Page Six.