Julia Roberts and Keifer Sutherland have gone on to have their own explosive careers and
their own relationships in the past three decades.
However, in the early 90s, they were an A-list Hollywood couple planning their massive Hollywood
wedding.
Just three days before the big day, though, it seemed like Roberts became a real-life
runaway bride, running off with Sutherland’s best friend, actor Jason Patric.
Julia Roberts, the queen of Hollywood’s romantic comedies, lived a life no less intriguing
and dramatic than her on-screen roles.
The 23-year-old had become a star, already having Pretty Woman, Steel Magnolias, and
Sleeping With the Enemy under her belt and eclipsing her brother Eric.
She had also been newly engaged and swept off of her feet by 24-year-old Kiefer Sutherland.
The couple was preparing for a June wedding that the world was anticipating.
The wedding itself was to be a literal Hollywood production, on a soundstage at 20th Century
Fox done up to look like a garden.
Why not an actual garden?
Who knows?
The lovebirds, both young up-and-comers at the time, met filming the 1990 sci-fi film
Flatliners and instantly connected.
Sutherland and Patric’s friendship predated that relationship by a few years — they
both starred in the 1987 cult classic, The Lost Boys.
Roberts had recently broken off a short-lived engagement with former co-star Dylan McDermott
and the Stand By Me actor was fresh off a divorce from actor Camelia Kath with whom
he shares a daughter.
The couple was very much in love.
Julia even talked about her man during her Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe speech
for Steel Magnolias.
She thanked her “best friend — my beautiful blue-eyed, green-eyed best friend, who gives
me everything.”
However, their relationship, reportedly, was also messy, chaotic, and full of drama.
Sutherland was rumoured to be keeping the company of a 24-year-old go-go dancer named
Amanda Rice, who had publicized the story to papers for money, stating that Kiefer had
termed Julia an “insecure ice princess.”
Unhinged by Keifer’s name getting sullied, Julia was spotted with a massive rock around
her ring finger only a week later, signalling her engagement to him.
They were set to say “I do” in front of 150 “glitziest and ritziest” guests.
“It was going to be the fantasy wedding of the decade,” People reported at the time.
Mere days ahead of the nuptials, the pairs’ representatives issued a joint statement,
announcing that it had been “postponed.”
An anonymous source told People that the decision to pull the plug was made by Roberts, adding,
“She has wanted to do it for some time but didn’t know if she could find the courage.”
Sutherland moved out of Roberts’s house, and, as InStyle noted, Roberts was then seen
having a meal with Patric on the day she was supposed to wed his friend.
In the wake of the breakup, tabloids reported that Patric had been uninvited to the wedding
a few days before.
He and Roberts remained tight-lipped when they headed off to Ireland together and eventually
stepped out in public a few times back in the States.
“When I get hold of Jason, I am going to tear him limb from limb,” Sutherland was
rumoured to have said at the time.
“That snake pretended to be my best friend and all the time he was really after my girl.”
No one saw it coming — a worldwide scandal, as big then as Brangelina would become.
Booze, drugs, strippers, infidelity — all were whispered, none confirmed.
All sorts of things were reported — Roberts and Sutherland fighting over whether Patric
should come to their wedding; Roberts dumping Sutherland by phone, via a third party; and
that tragic, most 1990s totem of all, the ill-conceived tattoo Sutherland got in tribute
to Roberts.
There was bad blood for several years afterwards.
A few months after the wedding that wasn’t, Roberts spoke out about the tabloid frenzy
that resulted from their split.
Though she told Entertainment Weekly that the decision not to get married was a mutual
one, she also said she felt that “Kiefer, for whatever reasons, tried to make it seem
like he was the victim of the situation.”
“I quite honestly believe that Kiefer knows that it’s the best thing for himself and
for me that it didn’t happen,” she said.
“Somehow or another, it turned into Kiefer being left at the altar.”
A good 15 years later, Sutherland praised his ex-fiancée for having the foresight to
call things off.
“I commend Julia for seeing how young, and silly we were, even at the last minute, even
as painful and as difficult as it was,” he told Rolling Stone.
“Thank God, she saw it.”
As his friendship with Patric, that wasn’t mended yet.
They were friends, and he was surprised that he never got a call from Jason saying he’s
“fallen in love with da-da-da,” Sutherland said.
Back in 2011, when Jason was gently asked about it by New York Magazine, he said in
part, “People Do.
Not.
Care.
About it.”
Oh yes, we do.
The actor Michael Rosenbaum understands this, which is why when he had Sutherland and Patric
on his podcast, he brought it up.
The two actors guested on the Apr. 27 episode of the podcast, Inside of You.
It’s the first time they have spoken out together about Roberts or the rift in their
relationship.
It turns out, after about 20 years of not speaking, the two became friends again around
2009 and even starred together in the Broadway show, That Championship Season.
“The thing is that, Roberts is not here right in this room, so I feel strange talking
about what she told me or what she told Kiefer because she can speak for herself,” Patric
told host Michael Rosenbaum when he brought up the sensitive topic.
As for the gossip, he said: “The large stuff about the press and being uninvited to the
wedding and the taking over the bride and all that, that’s all bulls**t.”
Sutherland agreed: “All bulls**t.”
They wouldn’t discuss the specifics, except to suggest it was a case of bad timing.
“The truth where I’m coming from: you fall in love, you fall in love,” Sutherland
said.
“There’s nothing you can do about that.
Julia’s an extraordinary person, and he is too.
Timing is what it is, and everyone moves on from that.”
Neither Sutherland nor Patric could remember exactly how many years had passed since they
met, cleared the air, and picked their friendship back up.
Still, they both shared that temporarily losing that friendship was the worst part of the
awkward situation.
Sutherland said that it wasn’t Roberts he grieved as much as it was Patric.
Of that time, he said his life was like a country song: “I lost my pick-up and my
dog and my best friend, and I miss my best friend.”
When Rosenbaum pointed out that many people would not have been able to get over a perceived
betrayal like that, the 24 star brought up a famous romantic scandal from the classic
rock world.
“I don’t know, I mean, George Harrison and Eric Clapton were best friends until the
bitter end, you know,” he said.
Clapton, who was Harrison’s best friend, married his ex-wife, Pattie Boyd.
“And our situation wasn’t that, by the way.
So, I figure if they can deal with what they dealt with, we can certainly do it.”
Jason explained that their issues were already well in the past when he and Sutherland reunited,
remaining friends and collaborators.
“When I saw him again,” Patric says of his reunion with Sutherland, “it was more
of a laugh and a toast.
They both, Kiefer and Julia, have been subsequently married since, a couple of times… and what
lasted after all that is me and Kiefer, 35-year buddies.”
Back in 2016, Sutherland told People that what began as a pure desire to spend their
lives together evolved into a massive worldwide event for him and Roberts.
“We were young, and we were both very much in love.
She was arguably the most famous woman in the world, and this wedding that was supposed
to be something between the two of us became something so big,” he explained.
When they first met, Sutherland was the bigger star, but Roberts’s subsequent turn in Pretty
Woman catapulted the actor to “America’s Sweetheart”-level fame.
“I think it took a lot of courage, even amongst all of that other stuff, to be able
to say, ‘I can’t do this,’” the actor continued.
“I think she was being realistic for herself.”
Thankfully, Roberts herself never really lost the public’s goodwill — a fantastic feat,
given how often women are cast as jezebels who steal their men or prudes who deserve
to lose them.
And since all this went down before the internet, all three players have kept their dignity.
Roberts’s star only continued to rise following her split from Kiefer, and she rode into the
21st century on a wave of commercial successes like My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill,
and Runaway Bride.
In 1993, she shrugged off her typical charming actor type and wed singer-songwriter Lyle
Lovett only three weeks into their relationship.
Unfortunately, they split less than two years later.
Roberts met her current husband, cinematographer Danny Moder on the set of The Mexican in 2001.
They married the following year and welcomed twins Hazel and Phinnaeus in 2004.
Roberts gave birth to a second son, Henry, in 2007.
In the next decade, Kiefer shifted his focus from film to television and was cast as Jack
Bauer in the wildly popular and long-running Fox drama series 24.
Sutherland married second wife Kelly Winn in 1996, with whom he stayed until 2004.
He’s been linked to an actor, model, and saxophonist Cindy Vela) since 2014.
They kept their relationship private up until 2017, when they became engaged.
That’s all we have for you today, Juicers!
Which celebrity couple do you want us to talk about next?
Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
As always, thanks for choosing us!
Spread the word, and don’t forget to subscribe and click that notification bell for more
celebrity stories.
And we’ll be right back!
Be well and be kind.