As it turns out, Julia Roberts has been living a lie and she didn't even know it!
During a recent episode of Finding Your Roots, the veteran actress discovered that she isn't actually a 'Roberts' after all! Here's why...
The 55-year-old was appearing on the popular Finding Your Roots series, which brings on celebrities and famous faces as guests, and delves into their ancestry to make mind-boggling discoveries. Fellow actor Edward Norton was even part of the show recently, where he discovered that his 12th great-grandmother was the real Pocahontas!
In this latest episode, Julia received quite the shock when the show's host - Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - revealed to her that, biologically, she is not a 'Roberts' but a 'Mitchell.'
"Actor Julia Roberts is about to uncover a secret hidden deep in the branches of her father's family tree," Dr. Gates had the audience, before sitting down with Roberts (or, shall we say, Mitchell) to explain his findings.
For that, he produced a copy of the 1880 census, in which the Pretty Woman actress' great-grandfather - John Pendleton Roberts - was listed as living with his mother, Rhoda Suttle. Roberts had then stated she'd never heard that name before. Dr. Gates then revealed the name of Pendleton Roberts' father was missing.
The historian and academic had then discovered that Suttle's husband - Julia's great-great-grandfather Willis R. Roberts, whom she'd married during the 1850s - had sadly passed away in 1864. Interestingly, this was over a decade before the birth of Julia's great-grandfather, Pendleton Roberts.
"Julia, Willis Roberts could not possibly be your great-grandfather," Dr. Gates told the actress, "he was dead." Julia looks visibly shocked, before the show's host continues. He details how - using DNA from Julia and her cousin - he was able to link the actress to "a cluster of matches" that tied her to a man named Henry McDonald Mitchell, Jr. That man, Dr. Gates stated, is Julia's biological great-great-grandfather.
"So, we're Mitchells," Julia asked, to which Dr. Gates replied: "You're Julia Mitchell. You're not Julia Roberts biologically."
The Mitchell in question turned out to be married and a father to six children, and in a separate census was listed as living with them. Though, his mother apparently lived just four houses away from Julia's great-great-grandmother, so it's possible that the pair could have carried on an affair without being detected.
Julia herself comments on this, theorizing that her great-great-grandfather's wife may have believed he was visiting his mother when he could very well have been knocking boots with Julia's great-great-grandmother.
I don't know about you, but I definitely don't think I could get used to a Julia Mitchell!