Hollywood icon Julia Roberts shared an interesting tidbit about her life in a recent chat with CBS reporter Gayle King. The Pretty Woman star revealed that civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, paid the hospital bill for her birth.

The Kings were friends with the actress' parents, Walter and Betty Lou Roberts. "The King family paid for my hospital bill… Martin Luther King and Coretta," the 55-year-old actress told King, reported the Insider.

The chat went viral after former strategic adviser to President Barack Obama, Zara Rahim, shared part of the chat on Twitter.

"Today is Julia Roberts birthday! 55 years ago MLK and Coretta Scott King paid for her parents hospital bill after she was born," Rahim tweeted on Friday (Oct. 28). "Can’t stop thinking about this since I read it. Here she is talking about it with @GayleKing."

"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," the mother-of-three told King in the series HISTORYTalks. "My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over,’ and so they all just became friends."

The Kings helped Roberts' family "out of a jam" when they couldn't afford to pay the hospital bill after the Erin Brockovich star's birth. (Roberts was born on Oct. 28, 1967, in Smyrna, Georgia.)

"In the '60s, you didn’t have little Black children interacting with little white kids in an acting school, and your parents were like, 'Come on in,'" the CBS This Morning host said in response to Roberts' revelation. "I think that’s extraordinary, and it sort of lays the groundwork for who you are."

Celebrities With a History of Protest

 

More From 107.3 KFFM