Oscar winner Julia Roberts has a lot to be thankful for this year, including her new “grandmother”, 102-year-old Mildred Mulligan. The pair met while filming an upcoming documentary on the 95-year friendship between three centenarians and seem to have adopted each other.
“Will you be my grandma?” Julia asked Mildred, a California woman with five grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren. “I don’t have one.”
And Mildred was more than happy to add the Pretty Woman star to her brood. “Julia is warm and friendly,” she says. “Who would have thought it could have happened to me at 102!”
The documentary Old Friends, produced through Julia’s Shoelace Productions, chronicles the life of Mildred, Helen Klipinger and Ann Pritchard, three ladies who met in primary school in 1906. Their friendship endures to this day, having survived four major wars, the Depression, 19 US presidents and the rise and fall of communism in Russia.
The Erin Brockovich beauty, now starring in Ocean’s Eleven, travelled to West Covina, California, for Helen’s 103rd birthday celebration. Later she accompanied two of the women on an emotional trip back to Glen Ellyn, the Chicago suburb where they first met, before interviewing their close friends and family.
Old Friends is set to air on US cable network A&E next year.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
