In Hollywood, it is expected that marriages will fall apart after only a short time. However, there are exceptions to the rule. While Julia Roberts was initially unlucky in love, she managed to turn it all around.
Julia Roberts and her husband, Daniel Moder, recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Reaching the 20-year mark is almost unheard of in Hollywood, but this couple is still very much in love.
To mark the occasion, Roberts took to Instagram to share a photograph of the couple sharing a kiss. The post’s caption said “Twenty,” in all capital letters with star emojis on either side of the word.
She also added hashtags to the post, which suggested the couple had not stopped smiling or kissing throughout their twenty-year marriage. The post was met with lovely comments from adoring fans and friends.
The couple has amassed fans in their rights as actors and as a couple because of the unique love story they share and the beautiful life that they have built for themselves and their children.
Moder and Roberts met in 2000 while Roberts was filming “The Mexican,” in which her co-star was Brad Pitt. Although they are now admired as one of the longest-running couples in Hollywood, their relationship began with a scandal.
When Roberts and Moder met, she had been labeled “The Runaway Bride” as she had walked out on her previous relationships. However, it was not Roberts’ previous relationships plaguing her union with Moder.
Moder’s ex-wife, makeup artist Vera Moder, was vocal about her feelings regarding Moder and Roberts’ marriage. In 2002, when the couple got married, Vera and Moder had been divorced for just one month.
Vera revealed that while she and Moder were still married, Roberts had been courting her husband. She addressed Roberts and warned:
“Danny has a roving eye … and he won’t change.”
Because Roberts and Moder began their relationship while he was still married, Vera even went so far as to call Roberts a “husband stealer.” She also said that the couple’s marriage would not last, and Roberts would soon be looking for a new husband.
While Vera tried hard to make it seem like Roberts was the cause of the dissolution of her marriage to Moder, Moder, and Roberts later addressed the issue, telling the press that wasn’t true.
Roberts admitted that it was easy to blame her because of the timing, but she was not the cause of her husband’s divorce. She said she didn’t mind pointing fingers at her as she knew the truth.
The actress then revealed the sequence of events from when Moder divorced Vera to when he married Roberts. She said:
“He sorted his whole thing out, separate and apart from me, and I sorted my life out separate and apart from him.”
However, because Vera was upset about the relationship between her ex and Roberts, she did not grant Moder a divorce for many months. Roberts then fired back at Vera passive-aggressively with an article of clothing.
Amid the battle between Vera and Moder, Roberts went out in a hand-made shirt that had “A Low Vera” written on it. Many understood this was a dig at her lover’s ex-wife because she interfered in their relationship.
Roberts then went on to pay Vera to hurry the divorce process along. She forked over $400,000 so that Vera would sign the divorce papers and Roberts and Moder could finally get on with their lives.
Despite all of Vera’s battles, warnings, and predictions about Moder and Roberts’ relationship, they remain one of the strongest couples in Hollywood. Roberts has often spoken about her gratitude for her husband.
Talking to Gwyneth Paltrow in 2018, Roberts said that her relationship with Moder was the best she’d ever experienced. She shared:
“Getting married to Danny, that was my first, like, my life will never be the same in the most incredible, indescribable way.”
Since getting married twenty years ago, Roberts and Moder have welcomed three children. Their twins, Hazel and Phinneaus, born in 2004, turn 18 in November 2022, and their youngest son, Henry, was born in 2007 and turns 15 in 2022.
The twins are now on their way to college, and Roberts has shared that she has mixed feelings about her children growing up and moving away. Roberts shared that she never got the college experience, so she was excited for her twins to experience that.
However, she also said that the thought of her kids going to college makes her “a little light-headed,” but she was intrigued to see how it was all happening for her children as it is something new to her.
Hazel, the couple’s only daughter, has been dubbed “brave” by her mother. The event that caused this label to occur was when she donated her hair to Wigs for Kids at twelve years old. Not much else is known about Hazel.
Danny Moder and daughter Hazel Moder arrive at the premiere of ‘Flag Day’ during the 74th Cannes Film Festival held at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France | Source: Getty Images
Danny Moder and daughter Hazel Moder arrive at the premiere of ‘Flag Day’ during the 74th Cannes Film Festival held at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France | Source: Getty Images
Phinneaus, Hazel’s twin brother, is an athletic sibling and enjoys skateboarding and surfing. He has even been seen out with his parents carrying his skateboard with him. However, that is all that we know about the young man.
The couple’s youngest child, Henry, also enjoys skateboarding but has other interests. He is a pro at doing tricks on a trampoline and participates in extreme sports like riding BMX bikes and doing tricks on the ramps.
The couple is notoriously private, which has led to their children being sheltered from the public eye, which means that not much is known about them at this stage. However, they have their parents’ unwavering support in all their endeavors.
While Moder and Roberts share a beautiful relationship admired by the public, Roberts thinks that their children show them off to their highest capacity. She mentioned:
“We have these three human beings who are just a complete reflection of the love we have for each other.”
Roberts then shared that above all of the fantastic things she has done in her life and career as a Hollywood sweetheart, her children are her biggest achievement in life. However, it is essential to Moder and Roberts that their children are afforded privacy.
The couple moved to San Francisco when their children were still relatively young to grow up having some semblance of a normal life. Roberts wanted her children to grow up as individuals and not children of movie stars.
A friend close to the couple at the time said that nobody cared or even knew who the Moder children’s parents were in San Francisco, so they could grow up with a typical childhood experience.