Quotes By Julie Walters

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

I was having my teens in my 30s.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Debate is so much better than denial.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.