Quotes from Julie Walters

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.

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

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.

The money isn't a lure. I've done very well out of this business.

I keep seeing myself in my daughter, and I see my mother in me and in her. Bloody hell.

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

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

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

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

I remember Michael saying, 'Rich and famous? It's much better to be just rich'. I didn't quite get it to begin with. But he's right. You lose anonymity. I say to my family that you've no idea until you lose it how precious anonymity is.

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.

Debate is so much better than denial.

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

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

I was having my teens in my 30s.

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

Self worth is everything. Without it life is a misery.

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.

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.

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've never done so much bloody crying in my life. I was always moaning about how hard it was when we were shooting, how awful I felt.

I'm interested in politics, what's going on in the world, how people behave and how your life is often in the hands of other people.

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

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