Julia Roberts Says Playing An Actor In Notting Hill Was “So Awkward”

The queen of rom-coms, Julia Roberts, felt so uneasy about one of her iconic roles that it almost didn’t happen. In a new interview with British Vogue, the actor revealed that she nearly turned down Notting Hill, saying that her character Anna Scott “seemed so awkward” to play at first.

Speaking to Notting Hill screenwriter Richard Curtis, Roberts admitted that she felt weird about playing a fictional movie star after she had become a burgeoning actor herself. “Honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie, playing a movie actress,” she remarked. “I was so uncomfortable!”

In fact, the challenge seemed so daunting that she almost turned it down. “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,” she said. “I didn’t even know how to play that person.”

Of course, Roberts figured out how to play Anna, and doesn’t regret it at all. Notting Hill apparently set the standards so high that Roberts didn’t do another rom-com for over two decades, simply because she didn’t come across any that were as good until she starred in 2022’s Ticket to Paradise with George Clooney.

“People sometimes misconstrue the amount of time that’s gone by that I haven’t done a romantic comedy as my not wanting to do one,” she told The New York Times in April 2022.

“If I had read something that I thought was that Notting Hill level of writing or My Best Friend’s Wedding level of madcap fun, I would do it. They didn’t exist until [Paradise].”

Hugh Grant’s Notting Hill Opinion

Roberts’ love interest is played by none other than perennial rom-com heartthrob Hugh Grant, who also has his own hot takes on Notting Hill. In a March interview with Wired, he called the film’s ending “nauseating” while revealing a hidden Easter egg planted by director Roger Michell.

“In that nauseating moment on the bench at the end, I’m reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, which was going to be his next film,” Grant said. “So it’s a little in-joke from Roger Michell, God rest his soul.” Michell passed away at 65 in September 2021.

Where Would Anna Be Now?

In a recent interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings, Roberts speculated about where her most famous film characters would be now, including Notting Hill’s Anna Scott, who she thinks would have moved on from the acting world.

“She’s retired. She has six children and has maintained her waist size, amazingly,” she quipped. “And he runs the bookshop still. And now there’s a little knitting annex to the bookshop that she runs.” Maybe a sequel can make this a reality one day.