Julia Roberts has spoken out about the college admission scandal, which has been hitting headlines in the US.
Actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Hoffman were among 50 people charged in connection with the alleged scheme, which allowed wealthy parents to pay bribes in order to get their children into elite universities.
Julia is currently promoting her new movie Ben Is Back, and in the film, she plays a mother who does everything in her power to keep her drug addict son clean.
During an interview on ITV’s Lorraine, the actress explained how the film shows the lengths mothers will go to for their children – and brought up the college admissions scandal as an example.
She said: “To bring the college situation into the mix, that to me is so sad because I feel from an outsider that it says a little bit ‘I don’t have enough faith in you’.”
“In this story, this mother is trying to say, ‘I have both of our faiths until you can find the faith in yourself again’.”
While Julia wants her children to have a happy and comfortable life, she makes sure that they learn how to be independent.
“From the kind of childhood I had… I don’t want them to have to have some of the struggles I had,” she said.
“But at the same time, you do need to know how to make your bed and how to do your laundry and how to be able to make one meal, these are important life skills. They have to run their own race, they have to have their own experience.”
According to court documents, Lori Loughlin and her husband Massimo Giannulli have been accused of facilitating their two daughters admission to the University of Southern California – by allegedly agreeing to “pay bribes totalling $500,000” to get them “designated as recruits” to the USC rowing team.
Meanwhile, Felicity Huffman has been accused of engaging in a conspiracy to donate $15,000 in exchange to boost her daughter Sofia’s SAT scores.
