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She learned early in life that inducing laughter in others was the route to self-esteem. A survey two years ago placed her fourth in a top ten of the funniest females of all time. Julie Walters, it has often been observed, does old, mad or just plain batty better than any other actress. 'Julie came fourth in a vote of the top ten funniest females of all time' The shot was safe,' she adds, ever the trouper. 'It was mad and wonderful and I wasn't so worried about the dancing this time - although I did go a**e-over-tit and sprain my ankle in Dancing Queen,' she laughs. As Mrs Weasley in the Harry Potter films, she has won a tranche of adoring juvenile fans.Īnd this summer she co-starred with Meryl Streep in the joyous stage-to-big-screen musical hit Mamma Mia! Her stock in trade is comic grotesques: batty geriatrics salty, working-class mums matronly eccentrics. There have been a clutch of BAFTAs and, last year, a CBE. She has won two Oscar nominations, first for Educating Rita in which she starred with Michael Caine in 1983, then for Billy Elliot. Yet work she has, and to universal acclaim.Ĭlassic: Julie Walter stars alongside Michael Caine in Willy Russel's timeless classic Educating Rita

The marvel - what with all those disrupted nights - is that she has managed to work at all. Then, she adds ruefully, came the menopause. 'I just burst into tears it was the most fantastic thing to sleep properly for the first time in 48 years,' she recalls. She did, and the restful night's sleep that ensued made her weep for what she had been missing. 'My husband, Grant, said: "You'll have to get some tablets." I did, and they helped for a while, but of course they don't after a time and then you have to keep building up the dose, and you can't do that.'Īt which point, a helpful colleague suggested she try acupuncture. I battled through, but I thought "How am I going to find the energy to do this?" because I just wasn't sleeping at all. I had to adopt Mrs Overall's round-shouldered posture then run around dancing and singing. She would talk and walk in her sleep with both comic and distressing consequences, once somnambulating naked down a hotel corridor into the path of a, mercifully tactful, fellow guest.ĭuring rehearsals for the musical version of Acorn Antiques, for which she reprised the part of her much-loved geriatric char Mrs Overall and was nominated for an Olivier award, she was exhausted. Then night terrors - horrific nightmares in which she often imagined herself drowning or choking - assailed her. The fitful sleep of her childhood was punctuated by bed-wetting which persisted until puberty. She has never, even as a little girl, enjoyed the restorative bliss of a solid eight hours' rest. Sleep, it emerges, has eluded her all her life. He'd say: "Come on, let's have a cup of tea." I'm sure everyone else was thinking: "What the hell's the matter with her?"' I'd walk off because I didn't want Jamie (Jamie Bell, who played Billy) to see me upset. 'I couldn't remember my steps! People would look at me and say "It was only 30 seconds", but it felt really difficult. 'During the day, I felt weepy, bloated and fuzzy-headed,' she recalls.

She reached a physical nadir during the filming of Billy Elliot - yet her matchless portrayal of Billy's earthy, fag-smoking dance teacher Mrs Wilkinson earned her a BAFTA in 2001 - when, tearful and listless, she was 'too knackered' to memorise a short dance sequence. 'At one stage, I was waking up 15 times a night with flushes. I used to shout "The Tray!" and they'd rush off, find this tin tray and wave it in the air in front of me to cool me off.' She mimics the process of frenzied wafting. 'It started when I was doing a play at the National. Michael (Aged 25): I wouldn't have missed it for the world.Burden: At one stage, Julie Walters was waking up 15 times a night with hot flushes Tony: What the bloody hell are you doing here? Tony: You're a ballet dancer, then let's be havin' it! Yeah, like electricity.īilly: I don't want a childhood. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going. Tutor 1: What does it feel like when you're dancing?īilly: Don't know. Wilkinson: This'll sound strange, Billy, but for some time now I've been thinkin' of the Royal Ballet School. Braithwaite, "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow".īilly: All right, all right, don't lose your blob!īilly: Miss, you don't fancy me do, do you? Dad: Listen, have you noticed anything weird about our Billy lately?īilly: Just because I like ballet doesn't mean I'm a poof, you know.