Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a television actress that rose to prominence thanks to her portrayal of the
character Elaine Benes on the massively successful 1990s series Seinfeld. Since her days on Seinfeld,
Julia has maintained success in the entertainment industry with various other starring vehicles,
including the recent HBO series Veep. Although Julia is still a big star, her personal life
has been rife with tragedy as of late, starting with the death of her beloved father in 2016.
Join Facts Verse as we take a look at how Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ family is hiding some dark secrets.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus was born in Manhattan on January 13, 1961, to parents William and Judith.
When Julia was only one year old, her parents separated. They would later divorce and go on
to marry other people when Julia was still very young. Despite a year-long period where Julia
lived with her mom and stepfather in Sri Lanka so that the latter figure could fulfill his work with
the international healthcare organization Project HOPE, Julia spent the majority of her early
childhood years divided up between her mother and stepfather’s household in Washington, DC,
and her father and stepmother’s household in Mount Kisco, New York.
Both of Julia’s parents went on to have children with their respective new spouses,
and Julia had a hard time fitting in fully within either of her households.
Her father was much wealthier than her mother, leading Julia
to feel as if she didn’t quite belong with her less-wealthy stepsiblings. According to Julia,
she would often hide her exuberant gifts from her father when she came home from visits so that her
stepsiblings on her mother and stepfather’s side wouldn’t become jealous and shun her.
Another thing that made Julia feel separate from her stepsiblings on her mother and stepfather’s
side was the fact that she has always looked a good deal different than them.
Her stepsiblings on her mother and stepfather’s side include two sisters with straight blond hair,
while Julia has always had chaotic black curls. Julia’s looks come predominantly
from her father’s side of the family. Julia’s father was Jewish, and his family actually
suffered from persecution during World War II before fleeing to the United States.
Julia’s father, William, was born in France in 1932. Growing up, William’s father worked for
the French Resistance during the days of World War II. Eventually, the religious persecution in
the Nazi-occupied area became too much for the family to bear, and William’s family was forced
to flee to America. There, William found immense professional success. He started his career as a
lawyer in New York City before eventually becoming the chairman of the Louis Dreyfus Company, which
was a family business. As the head of the Louis Dreyfus Company, William became a billionaire.
He began serving as the head of the company in the 1960s when Julia was still very young.
During her childhood, Julia Louis-Dreyfus began attending an independent all-girls
college-preparatory school in Bethesda,
Maryland, by the name of the Holton-Arms School. It was here that the young girl got her first
taste for performing. She found that she greatly enjoyed making people laugh in school plays,
and chose to participate in every single one the school put on during her time there.
After graduating from the college-preparatory school, Julia went on to enroll in college at
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She began attending the school in 1979, all the while
auditioning for whatever acting roles she could find. The most promising role that Julia could
find at the time was in a musical-comedy revue put on at the college by the name of the Mee-Ow Show.
The Mee-Ow Show was essentially the college’s improvisational comedy troupe, and Julia had hopes
that her time with the troupe would lead towards bigger and better things, which it ended up doing!
Not long into Julia’s time performing with the Mee-Ow Show, her and several other members of
the troupe were invited to become cast members of the hit comedy series Saturday Night Live. One of
Julia’s fellow performers on the Mee-Ow Show that was invited to join her on Saturday Night Live was
future husband Brad Hall, who she is still currently with!
Upon receiving her role on Saturday Night Live, Julia decided that she no longer needed to further
her education. She ended up dropping out of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, to
move to New York City. However, Julia didn’t end up having a very good time performing
on the seminal comedy sketch series. If you’re enjoying this video so far,
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Julia Louis-Dreyfus thought that her time on Saturday Night Live was going to play out much
differently than it did. According to Julia, she felt that she was drastically underutilized on
the series as a result of on-set misogyny and politics. However, performing on the series did
allow her to meet Larry David, who would go on to create Seinfeld with comedian Jerry Seinfeld
several years later. Julia didn’t know it at the time, but her time on Saturday Night Live would
end up meaning big things for her career just for the fact that it allowed her to meet Larry David.
Both Julia and her future husband ended up being fired from Saturday Night Live,
by which time they had decided to become involved romantically. Together, the two made the decision
to move out to California as a couple and attempt to make it as stars in Hollywood.
The couple tied the knot in 1987, and continued to actively try to make a name for themselves in
the entertainment industry. After several years of treading water, Julia received a
phone call from her old friend Larry David, inviting her to join the cast of Seinfeld.
Julia was initially hesitant to join onto Seinfeld because she didn’t want to be a supporting player.
However, she eventually decided to sign on because she had a feeling that the show was going to
become huge. Julia’s intuition proved correct, as Seinfeld arguably became the biggest sitcom of the
1990s! During Julia’s time on the series, she gave birth to two children, fathered by husband
Brad Hall. She gave birth to first son Henry in 1992, followed by second son Charlie in 1997.
Following Seinfeld’s end in 1998, Julia decided to take a break from acting to focus on her family.
After taking several years to focus on her family following the end of the hit series Seinfeld,
Julia Louis-Dreyfus decided that she was ready to go back to work in the mid-2000s.
After the failure of 2002’s Watching Ellie, Julia managed to break the
supposed “Seinfeld curse” thanks to the hit 2006 sitcom The New Adventures of Old
Christine. The supposed Seinfeld curse dictates that none of the main cast members have managed
to have successful follow-up projects. For Jason Alexander and Michael Richards, this has certainly
proved true. However, The New Adventures of Old Christine broke the curse for Julia, and she has
found even more success in recent years thanks to her subsequent lead role on the HBO series Veep,
where she played the vice president of the United States. Meanwhile, Jerry Seinfeld never managed to
find a successful follow-up series to Seinfeld because he simply didn’t have any desire to.
Although Julia Louis-Dreyfus has managed to find continued career success in recent years,
her personal life has been filled with numerous tragedies. In 2016,
her father passed away. She announced his death while accepting an award for her performance
on the series Veep. Just over a year later, Julia was diagnosed with cancer and had to
take a break from her continued filming of the series so that she could undergo chemotherapy.
During her time undergoing chemotherapy in 2017, Julia has claimed that she found
solace in the company and shared laughter of her family, including younger sister Emma.
Thanks to the shared laughter and company of her family during her painful chemotherapy,
Julia’s cancer went into remission in early 2018. Following this near brush with death,
Julia continued her break from performing on Veep for a period of time in order to go
on a much-needed vacation to Hawaii with her husband. After this vacation came to an end,
Julia returned to filming Veep as if nothing had happened. However, less than a month
into her resumed tenure on the successful series, Julia received some devastating news.
After the death of her father and her subsequent battle with cancer, Julia
Louis-Dreyfus had likely assumed that she was in for some comparatively clear waters. However,
this didn’t turn out to be true. Another tragedy proved to be just around the corner, as Julia’s
younger sister Emma passed away in August of 2018 as a result of a surprise seizure. It
was later determined that Emma had cocaine and alcohol in her system during her death,
and many went on to speculate that her and Julia may have had an estranged relationship.
In response to the suggestion that her and younger sister Emma had an estranged
relationship before the latter’s death, Julia responded that the notion was untrue.
Julia laid her sister to rest, and continued performing on Veep
until its end in 2019. Julia is now 61 years old, and hopefully her dark days are behind her!
Despite the fact that Julia Louis-Dreyfus has gone on to become the only one of Seinfeld’s supporting
main cast members to have broken the supposed Seinfeld curse, the comedic actress hasn’t had
quite as easy of a time in her personal life as she has in her career. Now it’s time to hear from
you: did you know that Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ late father was a billionaire mogul, making
the beloved comedic television star a billionaire heiress? As always,
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