Sleeping With Julia Roberts.

Sleeping with Julia Roberts

As well as my sexual encounter with Sarah Lancashire on a Virgin train ;), I have slept with Julia Roberts. Well, actually I have slept next to Julia Roberts. Well, next door to her to be precise. I was staying at the Sheraton Hotel at Paris Airport on a tedious work thing which lasted three or four days. Julia was making a film in the hotel. She was co-starring with Antonio Banderas. I am not sure that it ever made it to the movies or even to DVD because I have not been able to find any reference to it in either of their filmographies or on the shelves at Blockbuster. Nevertheless, I slept in the room next to Julia.

She was beautiful and surprisingly petite. I got within six feet of her at one point (!) when they were filming on the landing outside of our rooms. She smiled at me. Only me. She was waiting to be filmed while we were watching them filming one of the other female stars being thrown over the balcony.

There was quite some disruption in the hotel during the filming. It was really quite exciting. For example, most of the time, the guest lift was not working and we had to use the service lift and walk through the kitchens and other “secret” areas of the hotel to get to reception. Walking through the kitchen made me feel a little bit like a US president en route to being assassinated – well, in the movies it always seems to happen that way doesn’t it? They go through the kitchen and they get shot by the mafia guy along with some small Mexican waiter that is living the American dream.

Lifts (elevators for our American cousins) seemed to figure heavily in the film as well. For about an hour I watched them try to film some “famous” French actor, that I have never heard of and never seen in any film, enter the hotel The idea seems to have been that he would walk into the hotel, walk to the lifts, enter the lifts, and presumably go upstairs and throw a woman off the balcony. Simple. Except that, in the world of Hollywood, it seems actors are not allowed to press the button to call a lift or to wait for it to arrive. For a whole hour they were trying to time it so that someone would push the lift call button off camera, so that the actor would arrive in front of the lift just as the doors would slide open. They hadn’t managed it after an hour and I got bored and went and did some work. In any case Julia was not there to distract me. My little American Tinkerbell.

Julia sent a bottle of champagne to my room to apologise for the noise and disruption. I thought that that was very nice of her. I waited in my room hoping that she would knock my door and share a glass or two with me. Unfortunately she didn’t. I didn’t hear her in her room that night. And, believe me, I listened. I listened hard. And, it came as a huge disappointment when I found out the following morning that Julia (or at least her staff) had sent a bottle of champagne to everyone on the landing. And, I thought that I had been special. Sigh.

This is the closest that I have come so far to a real “A-list” celebrity. To a real star. There have been many minor celebrities along the way (see earlier posting). And, on one occasion I got a little closer than was comfortable. Julian Cope checked me out in the urinals of the village hall in Portree on the Isle of Skye. C and I went to Skye on our first ever holiday together. We got engaged while we were there. But, imagine our surprise when we discovered that Julian Cope was performing at the local village hall. He was doing a tour of the Inner Hebrides. Clearly the residents of Skye had never heard of him. Well, it was 1992 and the Teardrop Explodes was more of an ‘80s thing. We were joined in the village hall by maybe six or seven other people. Julian was stoned. I am not sure that he had a clue where he was. He was off his head. But he belted them out and the world shut its mouth. I went to the loo at a half-time break. Julian followed. He chose the urinal next to me. I am sure he checked me out. Now, if only Julia Roberts had got so close……