Julia Roberts returns home following her mother's death from lung cancer

Just one year after tragedy, more heartache has hit the Roberts family.

Betty Lou Bredemus, mother of Julia Roberts and grandmother of young starlet Emma Roberts, died Thursday morning at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica after suffering from lung cancer. She was 80.

The news came nearly one year after Roberts' half-sister Nancy Motes committed suicide in February 2014.

Roberts, who has been filming "The Secret In Their Eyes," was comforted by friends as she headed over to her mother's West Los Angeles home just a few hours after her mother passed away.

The Hollywood actress had a tumultuous upbringing with her family in Atlanta, Georgia, after her biological father Walter Grady Roberts died from throat cancer when she was 10. Roberts' brother Eric has given several interviews claiming their step-father Michael Motes was abusive.

Despite the volatile rumors, the actress remained close with her mother, and was often snapped taking her to church and visiting her home.

Following her sister's death last year she told WSJ magazine, "It's hour by hour some days, but you just keep looking ahead. You don't want anything bad to happen to anyone, but there are so many tragic, painful, inexplicable things in the world."

"But [as with] any situation of challenge and despair, we must find a way, as a family... It's so hard to formulate a sentence about it outside the weepy huddle of my family," she commented.

Roberts and her family have not released an official statement about their mother's death.

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