Three days before Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts were set to marry, she called off the wedding.

We all know how romantic comedies go. 

Loveable, complicated woman trips through life and a string of not-right romances until she finds her person, the person who shifts her world on its axis. Cue climactic wedding and maybe a quick glimpse into the future of little children running around while a heart-warming ballad swells.

For Julia Roberts, one of the genre's most legendary stars, it's not all that far from reality. (Well, minus the swelling ballad...)

This is how the Oscar-winning actor ended up with her husband of 20 years Daniel Moder. 

The leading men.

Early in her career, Julia Roberts did what girlfriends have been warning against since women entered the workforce: she fell for a colleague.

At the age of 19, the Georgia-born actor reportedly dated Liam Neeson, 35, whom she met on the set of the 1988 film Satisfaction. The following year, she began a relationship with her Steel Magnolias co-star, Dylan McDermott, which included a brief engagement.

And then, in 1990, along came Kiefer Sutherland. 

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The pair got together after starring in the aptly titled box-office flop, Flatliners, and soon became engaged.

Theirs was billed as one of the weddings of the decade. Some 150 guests had been invited to witness Hollywood's most bankable star wed her leading man at 20th Century Fox's Soundstage 14, which had been transformed into a garden-like paradise for the event, People reported.

But just three days out from the June 1991 nuptials, Roberts called the whole thing off. On the day of their to-be wedding, Sutherland was seen moving out of the couple's LA home.

For Roberts, she was spotted that same day on a lunch date with Jason Patric, before they flew to Ireland together, apparently leaving Sutherland with a four-tier wedding cake. As a result, Roberts attracted criticism from tabloids for quickly moving on from her engagement with Patric who was also awkwardly Sutherland's friend.

Speaking to Vulture in 2011, Patric firmly denied speculation that he and Roberts took off to Ireland together on her would-be wedding day to begin their relationship.

Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland. Image: Getty.

"All that stuff is made up," he said. "They had a relationship that ended, and I was with her for a little while and it ended... I think they're fine. But we never had any issue, even back then."

But in 2021, Patric went back on his initial statement, and confirmed he and Roberts had in fact gone to Ireland together. Patric was reflecting on the relationship via Michael Rosenbaum's podcast Inside of You, where Patric was a guest alongside Sutherland – the pair unpacking what exactly had happened 30 years prior.

Sutherland said the whole situation was now "water under the bridge", explaining: "You fall in love, you fall in love – there's nothing you can do about that. She's an extraordinary person, and he is too, and timing is what it is and everybody moves on from that."

In 2016, Sutherland spoke about his time with Roberts, saying he doesn't have any ill feelings towards her.

"We were both young, and we were both very much in love, we had decided that we wanted to get married, but then this other thing kind of took over," He said to The Jess Cagle Interview. "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 described her decision as a brave one.

"It wasn't what she wanted to do in the end," he said. "And I think it took a lot of courage, in amongst all of that other stuff, to be able to say, 'I can't do this.'"

A two-year marriage, and a few relationships afterwards.

Roberts did end up walking down the aisle in June 1993 toward country musician, Lyle Lovett. 

Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett. Image: Getty.

The couple met through mutual friends: "I had a very strong reaction to meeting him," Roberts told Barbara Walters in 1993. "Different to the way I've ever reacted to any person on the planet... He's perfect."

According to press, their wedding was a far more low-key event, staged at an Indiana Lutheran church with just 72-hours planning.

Speaking about the how quickly their relationship unfolded, Roberts said they intended to get married later in the year, but she expedited the process.

"I could picture the months going by and I could sort of picture the wolves [tabloid press, she explained] coming in closer, and I got panicked," she told Walters. "It just seemed like the smartest way to do it so that it could be ours, as opposed to everybody's."

The couple ultimately separated in March 1995 and subsequently divorced. 

A relationship with actor, Matthew Perry, followed from 1995 to 1996 and included her iconic cameo as "Susie underpants" on Friends. 

Just recently, Perry opened up about the relationship in his new memoir, Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing.

Matthew Perry and Julia Roberts on Friends. Image: Getty.

The pair first got in contact with each other when Roberts told producers she would appear on the hit sitcom's 1995 Super Bowl episode, only if her storyline involved Perry's Chandler Bing. So the show's co-creator told Bing to get in touch with Roberts and send her flowers. 

"I had to woo her. I wanted something a tad flirty. I sent her three dozen red roses," he wrote.

After that exchange, the pair sent each other 'flirty faxes' for three months. 

On New Year's in 1996, Roberts flew Perry (in her private jet obviously) to her home in New Mexico to meet her family. But just two months later, Perry broke the relationship off. 

"Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me," he explained. "I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts. I can't begin to describe the look of confusion on her face."

But a more enduring relationship arrived in 1998 in the form of Law and Order and Miss Congeniality star, Benjamin Bratt – he, of the ridiculously chiselled jawline.

"We met in a restaurant," Roberts told Vanity Fair the following year. "He walked in, and I looked up at him, and it was like something hit me over the head with a bat."

I mean, fair.

"We're just ecstatically happy. We're drunk with joy 24 hours out of the day. We're sickening," she later told Oprah.

Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt. Image: Getty.

Yet in June 2001, Bratt's publicist confirmed they were no longer together. By then, rumours of a split had been circulating for close to a year, which was around the time Roberts met the man who would become the father of her children, Danny Moder.

"I love Benjamin. He's a good man, he's a fine man. He is, to the exultation of the female single population, not my man anymore," Roberts said in July 2001. "Sad, but true, and not ugly, not because of anyone else."

Happily ever after, with Danny Moder.

The pair met on the set of the 2000 film The Mexican, where Roberts starred alongside Brad Pitt. 

Moder was married to makeup artist Vera Steimberg at the time while Roberts was in a relationship with actor Benjamin Bratt. When the pair got together, it caused quite an uproar, but Roberts has always maintained she wasn't the reason Moder split from his ex-wife. 

"He sorted his whole thing out, separate and apart from me," she told Oprah in 2003. "And I sorted my life out, separate and apart from him. I think that's the only reason we were able to ultimately fall in love with each other and be together. I'm an easy person to point the finger at – 'she did it' – and I see that. I don't begrudge people the easy finger-point. It just doesn't happen to be so."

After his divorce was finalised the couple married on July 4, 2002, at Roberts' New Mexico ranch. 

Image: Getty.

The pair occasionally attend Hollywood events together or mark milestones on social media, but mostly maintain a low-key public profile. The couple have three children; twins, Phinnaeus and Hazel, born in November 2004, and son, Henry, born in 2007. Recently they marked their 20-year anniversary in July 2022.

Looking back, the actress says meeting and marrying Moder was a "real seismic shift".

"That was the first [feeling] like 'my life will never be the same' in the most incredible, indescribable way," she said on Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop podcast in 2018.

"He truly, to this day, to this minute is just my favourite human. I'm more interested in what he has to say or his point of view just than anybody. Really, we're so lucky in that way. We just really, really like each other and we just enjoy each other's company."

This post was originally published on July 4, 2020, and was updated on November 1, 2022.

Feature Image: Getty.