Betty Lou Bredemus, Julia Roberts’ beloved mother died early Thursday morning after a long battle with lung cancer.
She was 80 years old.
Betty Lou Bredemus is survived by her children, Eric Roberts, 58, Julia, 47, and Lisa Gillan, 49. Her other daughter, Nancy Motes, committed suicide last year at the age of 37.
Betty Lou Bredemus also leaves behind four grandchildren, actress Emma Roberts, who is Eric Roberts’ daughter, and Julia Roberts’ children, Phinnaeus and Hazel, both 10, and Henry, 7.
Julia Roberts was very close with her mother. Her and Betty Lou Bredemus leaned on each other after Nancy Motes died of an overdose last year, and Bredemus helped pull their family together.
After Motes’ death, Julia Roberts said, “It’s hour by hour some days, but you just keep looking ahead. But [as with] any situation of challenge and despair, we must find a way, as a family.”
That’s not the only time that Betty Lou Bredemus was instrumental in uniting the family after a tragedy.
Betty Lou Bredemus, who once ran an acting school in Smyrna, Georgia, lost her first husband and Julia’s father, Walter Grady Roberts, when Julia was just 10 to throat cancer.
Betty Lou Bredemus was with Julia Roberts when Julia first realized that she had become famous back in the late 1980’s.
It was shortly after she starred in the 1988 film, Mystic Pizza, that Roberts was first approached by a fan when she went to the movies with her mother, Betty Lou Bredemus.
Julia Roberts is in the midst of filming her latest movie, The Secret In Their Eyes.
Hopefully, the family of Betty Lou Bredemus can come together once again to comfort each other over the loss of their mother and grandmother.
