Julie Walters Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

Debate is so much better than denial.

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.

There were people asking 'Can women be funny?' People still ask that. It's like asking: 'Can women breathe in and out?'

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I can talk myself so much into my part.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I was having my teens in my 30s.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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