Notting Hill: The one line Julia Roberts “hated” saying
20 years ago, the world became captivated by the love story between ordinary book store owner Will Thacker and Hollywood superstar Anna Scott in Notting Hill.
No one knew the movie would garner the immense amount of success that it did when it was released in June 1999.
Earning a massive $516 million at the box office globally, the movie starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts is one of the most iconic love stories of all time.
It isn’t easy to find a British rom-com that compares to Richard Curtis’ charming script – he’s also the mastermind behind Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral and many more – but believe it or not, there’s a line in the film that Roberts regrets saying.
The dialogue is said when Anna and William are in bed and the actress opens up about the cons of fame, and how her love life has been affected by her super stardom.
Anna: “Rita Hayworth used to say, ‘They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me’.”
William: “Who’s Gilda?”
Anna: “Her most famous part. Men went to bed with the dream; they didn’t like it when they would wake up with the reality. Do you feel that way?”
William: “You are lovelier this morning than you have ever been.”
Despite the scene causing heart eyes all around the globe, Roberts wasn’t so keen.
“I hate to say anything negative about what Richard wrote because he’s a genius, but I hated saying that line (about Hayworth),” she later told Vanity Fair.
“To me, it was nails on a chalkboard. I don’t really believe any of that.”
However, the movie still holds a special place in the 51-year-old’s heart, even after she nearly turned down the part.
“When I sat to read the script, I did not have any great expectations,” she admitted to The Birmingham Post shortly after the film’s release.
“I had been given a brief synopsis and it sounded unappealing. But when I read it, from the very start with her going into the bookshop and she seems very mysterious and there is this guy having all these troubles and they leave and collide and she is at his house and she kisses him, I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, this is great’, I was completely sucked in.”