3 December 2020 Julie Walters Oh all the time when Victoria Wood and I did our series. There were people asking ‘Can women be funny?’ People still ask that. It’s like asking: ‘Can women breathe in and out?’
3 December 2020 Julie Walters I remember Michael saying, ‘Rich and famous? It’s much better to be just rich’. I didn’t quite get it to begin with. But he’s right. You lose anonymity. I say to my family that you’ve no idea until you lose it how precious anonymity is.
3 December 2020 Julie Walters It seems that when you get to a certain age you almost give yourself permission to misbehave and say what you think. People allow it, with very old people.
3 December 2020 Julie Walters 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.
3 December 2020 Julie Walters My mother was born on a tiny farm in County Mayo. She was meant to stay at home and look after the farm while her brother and sister got an education. However, she came to England on a visit and never went back.
3 December 2020 Julie Walters I was always someone who lived in the future all the time, it was always the next thing – dreams of escape.
3 December 2020 Julie Walters Everyone comes up to me saying, ‘Cooee, Julie! Hello!’ as if I know them. Of course I don’t bloody know them. Am I flummoxed by it? Sometimes. I think, ‘Ooh, love, go easy.’ For a time, I did feel this pressure that I had to be funny, but it passes.
3 December 2020 Julie Walters It’s getting better generally, daily, especially in TV, for women in acting and age and looks count less. As more women come into the business. Change of any sort takes a long time to happen.
3 December 2020 Julie Walters I never wanted to become an actress because I’d read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.
