“I didn’t have a job”: How Julia Roberts nearly lost her role in ‘Pretty Woman’

Posted On July 23, 2024July 23, 2024

One of the most beloved romantic comedies of this – or any other – generation, Pretty Woman would have turned out completely differently had the original production company behind the movie not gone under in the midst of pre-production.

Snapped up by Disney subsidiary Buena Vista Pictures, anything even tangentially associated with the Mouse House wasn’t going to abide by the harder edges of the initial screenplay, and it turned out sanding them down was the smartest decision the project’s new backers could have made.

With Garry Marshall at the helm and Julia Roberts giving a star-making performance while generating incredible chemistry opposite Richard Gere, it was a monstrous success. Pretty Woman hoovered up $463 million at the box office, earned its leading lady a ‘Best Actress’ nomination at the Academy Award, won her a Golden Globe in the ‘Musical or Comedy’ category, and became a full-blown cultural sensation.

Roberts was the first of the key creative talents to hop aboard, only for Pretty Woman to come dangerously close to falling apart at the seams long before a single frame had even been shot. JF Lawton’s first draft was titled 3000, named after the amount Edward Lewis paid Vivian Ward for her time.

She was also a drug addict who would only get her money if she stayed off cocaine for a week, and in general, it was a much darker story. Roberts still wanted to be a part of it, though, and she thought she’d missed out on the opportunity when Vestron Pictures went bust.

“This small movie company folded over the weekend, and by Monday, I didn’t have a job,” she recalled to Variety, and there were no guarantees she’d win over the new team. “Garry Marshall came on, and because he’s a great human being, he felt it would only be fair to meet me, since I had this job for three days and lost it.”

Neither Disney nor Marshall were sold on keeping her in the lead, which boggles the mind in hindsight, knowing not only what it did for her career but how instrumental she was to Pretty Woman‘s success. Karen Allen, Molly Ringwald, Meg Ryan, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daryl Hannah, and Emily Lloyd all turned it down at one stage or another, but it would be an understatement to say things worked out for the best.

With Marshall sufficiently won over – not to mention fast running out of options – Roberts signed on the dotted line, and the rest was history. Gere doesn’t recall the movie anywhere near as fondly as its millions of fans around the world, but if it wasn’t for a combination of Roberts’ perseverance and so many other prospective stars turning it down, he would have been sharing the screen with somebody else in the film that still ranks as the highest-grossing of his entire career.

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