Julie Walters
Julie Walters
Julia Mary "Julie" Walters, CBEis an English actress and writer. She has won two BAFTA Film Awards, four BAFTA TV Awards and received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2014. Walters first came to international prominence in 1983, for playing the title role in Educating Rita. It was a role she had created on the West End stage and it earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. It also won her a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. She received a...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth22 February 1950
CityEdgbaston, England
As soon as I gave birth, it was as if you understand them. They become people, not kids. You start to identify with them. You see yourself in them.
I'm writing a novel about two actresses who go to New York, because that's what I know about. One has lost touch with reality, disappears and is picked up by a man.
There is this idea that appealing to youth is the only way forward. But that is no longer the case. Youth is not everything. Now we have all the baby-boomers in their 60s, like me, who are actively engaged in life - we're not retiring, we're not just being put out to grass once we hit 60.
The money isn't a lure. I've done very well out of this business.
I can talk myself so much into my part.
Along the way I have been able to choose some themes which ask questions - not necessarily force a message on anyone, but at least invite the audience to question things: jury service, dignity in dying, Ireland - and not least because they force me to ask myself questions. Where do I stand?
It wasn't being an alcoholic - it was going wild. It happened when I got famous. It was like having my teens in my early thirties: blotting out your life, not having to think about anything.
Being a mother adds another emotional dimension, a feel for children that I didn't have before I had one. They were a pain before.
It's getting better but men still earn more and there are more jobs for them. Ageism is a big thing. Parts for women disappear as you get older.
The way I relax is I think, 'I haven't got anything coming up.' I like to know there are months ahead when I've got nothing.
I was the little, funny one. I felt I was the child among grown women.
I think comedy's something you can't learn. It's an instinct, which makes it rather elusive.
You can't help but feel a little bit like a mother to the younger cast members.
There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women.