by Simona Marchetti
As a guest on the documentary series Finding Your Roots, the 55-year-old actress learned that her paternal great-great-grandmother had an affair with a married man after the death of her husband, Willis R. Roberts, who was their great-grandfather’s born John
Actually, Julia Roberts should be called Julia Mitchell. The 55-year-old actress’ true identity was recently revealed in an episode of the documentary series Finding Your Roots, in which Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. reconstructed celebrity family trees using DNA archives and painstaking research. The meticulous research thus made it possible to uncover the truth about the Hollywood star’s family: In the mid-19th century, his paternal great-great-grandmother, Rhoda Suttle, married Willis R. Roberts, who, however, died in 1864, more than ten years before the birth of Roberts’ great-grandfather John Pendleton Roberts, born August 26, 1878.
“Stunned”
“There’s no way Willis Roberts was your great-great-grandfather because he was dead,” the show’s host explained to the actress, who, understandably shocked, replied, “So I’m not Roberts?” Before dispelling her doubts, Dr. Gates Jr. that by digging deep in the Georgia archives, his team couldn’t find any details about the identity of her great-great-grandfather, so they used DNA to look for samples from Roberts herself and a first cousin of her father to find her biological father. The researchers then compared the results to those of others in the publicly available databases and found a group of matches linking Julia and her cousin to Henry MacDonald Mitchell Jr. In fact, the “Pretty Woman” star’s biological great-great-grandfather was married to a woman named Sarah at the time and already had six children. “So we’re Mitchell?” Roberts asked in amazement and the conductor couldn’t help but confirm the truth. That means she’s Julia Mitchell and not Julia Roberts, at least biologically. “I’m amazed – admitted the actress – it was a really unexpected turn of events!”. Of course, there’s no telling if Roberts’ great-grandfather John ever learned the identity of her real father, but it stands to reason that her mother, Rhoda, wanted to keep it a secret to avoid scandal. “I prefer the name Roberts anyway!” Julia laughed.
January 16, 2023 (change January 16, 2023 | 18:57)
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