Julia gets into character

Art will mirror life next month when Julia Roberts flies to Italy to join castmates Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matt Damon to begin filming her part in Ocean’s Twelve.

Roberts has been trying for a baby for ages and as much as she loves her co-stars she was dreading shooting because her character in the film is pregnant.

Now the cloud has lifted with her announcement on Tuesday that she is expecting twins, although the father is husband Danny Moder, of course, and not Clooney, her on-screen lover in the Ocean’s Eleven sequel.

Roberts is staying characteristically mum over suggestions that the twins – said to be a boy and a girl – stem from fertility treatment, but multiple births do run in her family. Her great grandmother was a twin, as are cousins.

The Pretty Woman star recently confided to her adopted gran, 104-year-old Mildred Mulligan, that she was desperate to start a family, saying that as much as she loved Louie, the daft puppy Moder gave her, she wouldn’t feel complete without a baby.

Some have even speculated that her recent return to her natural hair colour was because she wanted to avoid any chemicals in her body while trying for a child.

Ever since filming the final scene from Notting Hill, where she lay happily pregnant on a park bench with co-star Hugh Grant, she has dreamed of the day it would be for real.