Quotes By Julie Walters

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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?'

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

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

I was having my teens in my 30s.

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

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.

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.

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