“Miss Roberts Regrets” was the headline in People magazine — this within the heady days of the early ’90s, the primary actual Hollywood scandal of the last decade.
It was a love triangle involving newly minted megastar Julia, her well-known fiancé, and his finest buddy. It was all so unimaginable, so juicy, so doubtlessly profession ending that each one three went 30 years with out ever actually talking of it.
However since two of the three introduced it up on — the place else? — a podcast, let’s revisit a time when Hollywood nonetheless made film stars, when film releases had been occasions, once we craved glamour and gossip with out apology.
So right here we return to 1991: Julia Roberts, 23, had change into a supernova enjoying, per Hollywood cliché, a hooker with a coronary heart of gold in “Fairly Lady,” eclipsing her actor brother Eric, and was newly engaged to 24-year-old Kiefer Sutherland.
Julia and Kiefer had been the primary Gen-X Hollywood energy couple, larger than even Johnny & Winona. They presaged Gwyneth & Brad, Reese & Ryan, Ethan & Uma. Julia was tall, Kiefer much less so; she smiled, he grimaced; her picture was sunshine and apple pie, his hazard and despair. They made sense the best way Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw did, she the yin to his yang. Julia Roberts may do no improper.
The marriage itself was to be a literal Hollywood manufacturing, on a soundstage at twentieth Century Fox achieved as much as appear like a backyard. (Why not an precise backyard? Who is aware of? All too poetically, artifice trumped the actual factor right here.)
On June 14, 1991, the day of this million-dollar wedding ceremony, Julia Roberts ditched her groom on the altar and ran off together with his finest buddy Jason Patric, flying to Eire and scandalizing fellow passengers.
“Virtually making love” within the air, stated the London Every day Mail.
Nobody noticed it coming. This was worldwide scandal, as large then as Brangelina would change into. Booze, medication, strippers, infidelity — all had been whispered, none confirmed. Folks journal had Sutherland dishonest on Roberts with a stripper, who was unavailable for remark as she was present process breast implant surgical procedure.
The journal additionally had Roberts checking into Cedars-Sinai for 5 days after the stripper story broke; Sutherland transferring out of their residence and holing up in a $150-a-week motel, fielding calls from Michelle Pfieffer; Roberts and Sutherland combating over whether or not Patric ought to come to their wedding ceremony; the customized cake for the marriage, a duplicate of a 15-pound turkey (a compromise after Roberts vetoed his plans to serve Thanksgiving dinner at their reception), eaten as an alternative by the caterers; Roberts dumping Sutherland by cellphone, through a 3rd get together; and that tragic, most Nineteen Nineties totem of all, the ill-conceived Chinese language tattoo Sutherland bought in tribute to Roberts.
Good things, proper?
But again in 2011, when Patric was gently requested about it by New York journal, he stated partially, “Folks Do. Not. Care. About it.”
Oh sure, we do.
The actor Michael Rosenbaum understands this, which is why when he had Sutherland and Patric on his podcast this week, he introduced it up. Seems, after 20 years of not talking, the 2 grew to become buddies once more round 2009, and even did a play collectively.
As for the gossip, Patric stated : “The press, and being invited to the marriage, and taking off with the bride — that’s all bulls—t.”
Sutherland: “All bulls–t.”
They wouldn’t focus on the specifics, besides to recommend it was a case of “unhealthy timing.” “You fall in love, you fall in love,” Kiefer says. “There’s nothing you are able to do about that. She’s a rare individual, and he’s too, and, you realize, timing is what it’s, and everybody strikes on from that.”
Sutherland has additionally stated that it wasn’t Roberts he grieved as a lot as Patric; of that point, he stated his life was like a rustic track: “I misplaced my pick-up and my canine and my finest buddy, and I miss my finest buddy.”
Roberts herself has by no means commented, and she or he by no means actually misplaced the general public’s goodwill — a tremendous feat, given how typically girls are solid as jezebels who steal their males or prudes who should lose them. And since all this went down earlier than the web, all three gamers have saved their dignity, at the same time as Patric and Roberts broke up, after which she rapidly and briefly married Lyle Lovett.
“After I noticed him once more,” Patric says of his reunion with Sutherland, “ it was extra of fun and a toast. They each [Kiefer and Julia] have been subsequently married since, a pair instances . . . and what lasted in spite of everything that’s me and Kiefer, 35-year buddies.”
At which Sutherland jokes, “By no means bought the truck again.”
