128 Quotes by Julie Walters

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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