Celebrity News

Julia Roberts consults Meryl Streep’s daughter on what it’s like to have a famous parent

Gummer says she was nine when she realized her mother was famous.

Gummer says she was nine when she realized her mother was famous. (Marion Curtis/Startraks )

Julia Roberts has found an inside source who knows exactly what it’s like to grow up as the child of a superstar.

Roberts tells the April issue of Vanity Fair that she consulted Grace Gummer, the daughter of Meryl Streep who co-starred with her in the movie “Larry Crowne,” about what it is like to be a kid with an Oscar-winning parent.

“Grace comes up and goes, ‘Gosh, it’s so sweet seeing all your kids on the set. It reminds me of when I was little, and I would go see my mom at work.’ I asked, ‘Were you happy?’” explains Roberts of a conversation she had with Gummer. “Suddenly, I thought, here is a source of information. I asked, ‘How old were you when you realized your mom was Meryl Streep?’ She said, ‘I think I was probably 9 when I put that all together.’ I said, ‘Were you cool with it?’ She said, ‘Yeah, it was fine. There was no trauma.’ So that was hopeful.”

Roberts has raised her three children with cameraman Danny Moder in New Mexico, far from the Hollywood spotlight. Still, 7-year-old twins Hazel and Finn, and 4-year-old Henry, do witness people noticing their mother, even if they aren’t quite sure what’s going on.

“[We were] on a crowded street, and somebody noticed me, and then another person noticed. Somebody said as we were walking past, ‘Oh, that’s Julia Roberts.’ We all just kind of kept going. Then Finn said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s Julia Robinson,’” Roberts said of an incident that stuck in her memory. “That’s what gives you perspective. It could be Robinson, it could be Johnson, because it has nothing to do with me as a person.”