Quotes By Julie Walters

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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