As Julia Roberts celebrated her 58th birthday on Tuesday, many of her dedicated fans uncovered her simple yet classic middle name. The After the Hunt star’s middle name is Fiona, a moniker with origins in Scotland and Ireland, meaning “white” or “fair”. One X user took to the social media platform to exclaim, “How am I 29 years old and I just learned Julia Roberts and I have the same middle name,” while another chimed in, “Julia Roberts’ middle name is Fiona,” with a shocked face emoji tacked on.
Julia once joked about her middle name during the US-Ireland Alliance’s Oscar Wilde: Honoring the Irish in Film event in 2011, which saw her presenting the Honorary Irishman award to Ant-Man star Paul Rudd. “Maybe I can become Irish. My middle name is Fiona, which is a step closer to being Irish than Paul Rudd was five minutes ago,” she joked.
The mom of three has quite the intriguing family history, and reportedly has ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Germany and Sweden. She uncovered a major family secret during an episode of Finding Your Roots in 2023, where it was revealed that her great-great-grandmother had a baby out of wedlock with a man called Henry McDonald Mitchell Jr., making her true last name Mitchell, not Roberts.
“On the one hand, truly, my mind is blown,” she said on the show. “And it is fascinating. And on the other hand, there’s part of me that, when I’m calmer, can still wrap my arms around the idea that my family is my family. And I do prefer the name Roberts.” Julia is a household name, yet several women around the world have the exact same moniker as the 58-year-old, as she discovered in 2015.
Learn more about Julia’s famous family member below…
When Julia stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live!, nine other women with her name dialled in to meet her and discuss the perks they had enjoyed from being associated with her. “Well, I guess I am self-centered, and [it] never occurred to me that anybody else would be named Julia Roberts…until a girl came up to me, and she said, ‘Oh, I just wanna say hi. My name is Julia Roberts,'” the Oscar winner recalled on the show. “And I was like, ‘What?! That is incredible.'”
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Julia is not the only Roberts in show business, either. Her older brother, Eric Roberts, is one of Hollywood’s most prolific actors, having racked up over 700 film and TV credits since his screen debut in 1974. His daughter, Emma Roberts, is also an actress and Hollywood star, with credits like Wild Child, We’re the Millers, Scream Queens and American Horror Story to her name.
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1. Her religion
Julia Roberts converted to Hinduism in 2010. She was raised by a Catholic mother and a Baptist father. Her transformation occurred while filming Eat, Pray, Love, a film about a woman’s personal and spiritual journey.
2. Actor family
Julia comes from a performing family. Her parents Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Grady Roberts were actors who founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in 1978. Julia’s older brother Eric Roberts, is an actor, and her older sister, Lisa Roberts Gillian, is a film producer. Her most famous family member is her niece, Emma Roberts.
3. Age-gap relationship
When she was 19, Julia had a brief romantic relationship with Liam Neeson, who was 16 years her senior.
4. Hook filming feud
While working on the 1991 film Hook, Julia reportedly clashed with director Steven Spielberg.
5. Au natural
Known for being a redhead in her most famous films like Pretty Woman, Julia is naturally dark blonde.
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Eric and Julia have endured rough patches in their relationship in the past, particularly after he took credit for her fame on several occasions. “Now one of the things I’d like to apologize for in this book is for publicly saying on more than one occasion, ‘If it wasn’t for me, there would be no Julia Roberts,'” he wrote in his memoir, Runaway Train: Or the Story of My Life So Far.
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“That’s not only unfortunate, but it’s also untrue. And I hope Julie will accept this more public apology. It was an asinine thing to have said. I was proud of her, but it was pride turned on its head, to my own advantage.”
