Julie Walters Quotes

#1. 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.

Julie Walters

#2. Stage is the most exciting. Film is lovely, because it's like a family.

Julie Walters

#3. I'll tell you how it happened. The phone rang. Paul, my agent, goes, 'Would you like to play Meryl Streep's?' I said, 'Yeeees! I'll do it, whatever it is.' He said, 'It's Mamma Mia!.' I said, 'Oh no, which character? The fat friend?

Julie Walters

#4. I think comedy's something you can't learn. It's an instinct, which makes it rather elusive.

Julie Walters

#5. Shakespeare - it's not funny. No matter how they try to make Shakespeare funny, when it's meant to be funny it's not funny.

Julie Walters

#6. I don't know if you can change things, but it's a drop in the ocean.

Julie Walters

#7. It's very strong after the birth. It's extraordinary. You can't watch anything to do with kids being harmed.

Julie Walters

#8. My grandmother lived with us for a short time while I was a child. Old people tend to be slightly more eccentric - they can behave the way they want.

Julie Walters

#9. 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.

Julie Walters

#10. You can't help but feel a little bit like a mother to the younger cast members.

Julie Walters

#11. I was having my teens in my 30s.

Julie Walters

#12. 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.

Julie Walters

#13. 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.

Julie Walters

#14. Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of.

Julie Walters

#15. I don't like being out of the crowd. It's lonely within a group.

Julie Walters

#16. 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.

Julie Walters

#17. I'm interested in politics, what's going on in the world, how people behave and how your life is often in the hands of other people.

Julie Walters

#18. I never had any acting heroes. I never really went to the theatre.

Julie Walters

#19. 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.

Julie Walters

#20. I couldn't watch Tom and Jerry. The cruelty was too much. I had all these strange images, of tiny animals, all mixed up.

Julie Walters

#21. 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.

Julie Walters

#22. 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.

Julie Walters

#23. I can talk myself so much into my part.

Julie Walters

#24. In order to be creative you have to be allowed to fail.

Julie Walters

#25. 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?

Julie Walters

#26. I wanted above all else not to be like my mum.

Julie Walters

#27. I was asked about doing a nude shoot for men's magazine GQ. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

Julie Walters

#28. I was feeling very irritable. It was that difficult time of the month when the credit card statement arrives.

Julie Walters

#29. I always loved my mother, felt loved, but she was judgmental. Her father in Ireland didn't approve of women generally, and she took on his values. She believed her own mother was foolish.

Julie Walters

#30. We have to take risks with art. If we don't, it all becomes a bit boring.

Julie Walters

#31. That's why I'm an actress - escaping into a world.

Julie Walters

#32. I'd like to think there'll be too much of real life going on for me to want to do much acting.

Julie Walters

#33. Sixty felt like a big landmark. Not in a dreadful sense, but none of the other birthdays have bothered me. It's got labels on it - OAP, retirement - and I just wanted to take stock. I wanted to be in my greenhouse at home and at least give myself the opportunity of not working again.

Julie Walters

#34. I keep seeing myself in my daughter, and I see my mother in me and in her. Bloody hell.

Julie Walters

#35. Some of the most interesting questions needing to be asked today can best be asked on television, or on stage, and they can be wonderful, great dramas, but they won't necessarily be blockbusters.

Julie Walters

#36. I've never done so much bloody crying in my life. I was always moaning about how hard it was when we were shooting, how awful I felt.

Julie Walters

#37. I'm massively talented, and very, very beautiful in person; the public don't really realise that.

Julie Walters

#38. The money isn't a lure. I've done very well out of this business.

Julie Walters

#39. I didn't come into the business to get awards or titles.

Julie Walters

#40. Debate is so much better than denial.

Julie Walters

#41. I do find it therapeutic, writing about stuff that was frightening and painful as a child, and managing to see it from an adult's point of view. To get it out of the closet onto paper, metaphorically speaking, is therapeutic.

Julie Walters

#42. 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.

Julie Walters

#43. I read "Pride and Prejudice" [by Jane Austen]. I was gobsmacked by it - it's so funny and so modern. Unbelievable. You don't expect funny to come through after 200 years - humor doesn't transcend decades, let alone centuries.

Julie Walters

#44. I'm too young at 50. I'm not grown up yet. There's part of everybody like that.

Julie Walters

#45. 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.

Julie Walters

#46. I was the little, funny one. I felt I was the child among grown women.

Julie Walters

#47. Some people have a terrible stretch between family and work. It is a difficult thing to achieve.

Julie Walters

#48. The characters do have a life of their own; it's weird.

Julie Walters

#49. 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.

Julie Walters

#50. When I think of the future, I think of doing my washing so I've something to wear tomorrow.

Julie Walters

#51. 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?'

Julie Walters

#52. Self worth is everything. Without it life is a misery.

Julie Walters

#53. 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.

Julie Walters

#54. I'm more selective now I've got a family. I don't want to work all the time. My daughter's 12; I don't want to miss out on her life. Soon she'll be a teenager; she won't want me around.

Julie Walters

#55. I'd love to be in another film, but they haven't asked me. I think it's a shame but the prospects of me doing another one now are remote. Please do campaign on my behalf.

Julie Walters

#56. Suddenly, you are very much in the present, and you learn it's really the place where you should always live.

Julie Walters

#57. I went through bits of the 60s and thought myself a bit of a hippy.

Julie Walters

#58. I can understand why people get annoyed at being remembered for one thing, but a lot of actors aren't remembered for anything. I don't mind that.

Julie Walters

#59. 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.

Julie Walters

#60. I felt my mother about the place. I don't think she haunts me, but I wouldn't put it past her.

Julie Walters

#61. 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.

Julie Walters

#62. I was always someone who lived in the future all the time, it was always the next thing - dreams of escape.

Julie Walters

#63. I don't want to give up acting - it's what I am.

Julie Walters