Julie Walters

Her paternal grandfather Thomas Walters was a veteran of the Second Boer War, and was killed in action in World War I in June 1915 while serving with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment; he is commemorated at the Le Touret Memorial in France.

Walters and her family lived at 69 Bishopton Road in the Bearwood area of Smethwick.

The youngest of five children and the third to survive birth, Walters had an early education at St Paul's School for Girls in Edgbaston and later at Holly Lodge Grammar School for Girls in Smethwick.

Dame Julia Mary Walters (born 22 February 1950), known professionally as Julie Walters, is an English actress.

She is the recipient of four British Academy Television Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two International Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award.

Walters has been nominated for two Academy Awards across acting categories—once for Best Actress and once for Best Supporting Actress.

Julia Mary Walters was born on 22 February 1950 at St Chad's Hospital in Edgbaston, Birmingham, England, the daughter of Mary Bridget (née O'Brien), an Irish Catholic postal clerk from County Mayo, and Thomas Walters, an English builder and decorator.

She worked for the Everyman Theatre Company in Liverpool in the mid-1970s, alongside several other notable performers and writers such as Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite, Jonathan Pryce, Willy Russell, and Alan Bleasdale.

Walters first received notice as the occasional partner of comedian Victoria Wood, whom she had originally met in 1971 when Wood auditioned at the School of Theatre in Manchester.

The two first worked together in the 1978 theatre revue In at the Death, followed by the television adaptation of Wood's play Talent.

On television, Walters collaborated regularly with Victoria Wood; their projects included Wood and Walters (1981), Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985–1987), Pat and Margaret (1994), and dinnerladies (1998–2000).

They went on to appear in their own Granada Television series, Wood and Walters, in 1981.

They continued to perform together frequently over the years.

The BAFTA-winning BBC follow-up, Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV, featured one of Walters's best-known roles, Mrs Overall, in Wood's parodic soap opera, Acorn Antiques (she later appeared in the musical version, and received an Olivier Award nomination for her efforts).

Walters' first serious acting role on television was in Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff in 1982.

She performed various comic monologues in The Green Tie on the Little Yellow Dog, which was recorded 1982, and broadcast by Channel 4 in 1983.

Walters rose to prominence playing the title role in Educating Rita (1983), a part she originated in the West End production of the stage play upon which the film was based.

She came to national attention when she co-starred with Michael Caine in Educating Rita (1983), a role she had created on the West End stage in Willy Russell's 1980 play.

Playing Susan "Rita" White, a Liverpudlian working-class hairdresser who seeks to better herself by signing up for and attending an Open University course in English literature, she would receive the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical/Comedy, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1985, she played Adrian Mole's mother, Pauline, in the television adaptation of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.

She has appeared in many other films, including Personal Services (1987), Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Buster (1988), Stepping Out (1991), Sister My Sister (1994), Girls' Night (1998), Titanic Town (1998), Billy Elliot (2000), the Harry Potter series (2001–2011), Calendar Girls (2003), Becoming Jane (2007), Mamma Mia! (2008) and its 2018 sequel, Brave (2012), Paddington (2014) and its 2017 sequel, Brooklyn (2015), Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018).

Walters appeared in the lead role of Cynthia Payne in the 1987 film Personal Services – a dramatic comedy about a British brothel owner.

Then she starred with Phil Collins, playing the lead character's wife, June, in the film Buster, released in 1988.

She also appeared as Mrs. Peachum in the 1989 film version of The Threepenny Opera, which was renamed Mack the Knife for the screen.

In 1991, Walters starred opposite Liza Minnelli in Stepping Out, and had a one-off television special, Julie Walters and Friends, which featured writing contributions from Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett, Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale.

In 1993, Walters starred in the television film Wide-Eyed and Legless (known as The Wedding Gift outside the UK) alongside Jim Broadbent and Thora Hird.

The film was based on the book by the author Deric Longden and tells the story of the final years of his marriage to his wife, Diana, who contracted a degenerative illness that medical officials were unable to understand at the time, though now believed to be a form of chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis.

On stage, she won an Olivier Award for Best Actress for the 2001 revival of All My Sons.

She has won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress four times, more than any other performer, for her roles in My Beautiful Son (2001), Murder (2002), The Canterbury Tales (2003), and Mo (2010).

Walters and Helen Mirren are the only actresses to have won this award three consecutive times, and Walters is tied with Judi Dench for most nominations in the category with seven.

In 2006, the British public voted Walters fourth in ITV's poll of TV's 50 Greatest Stars.

She is the only actress to win the International Emmy Award for Best Actress twice, for her roles in A Short Stay in Switzerland (2009) and Mo (2010).

She was honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2014.

She said in 2014 that it was "heaven when [she] went to an ordinary grammar school", although she was asked to leave at the end of her lower sixth because of her "high jinks".

Walters later told interviewer Alison Oddey about her early schooling, "I was never going to be academic, so [my mother] suggested that I try teaching or nursing. [...] I'd been asked to leave school, so I thought I'd better do it."

Her first job was in insurance at the age of 15.

At the age of 18, she trained as a student nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham; she worked on the ophthalmic, casualty, and coronary care wards during the 18 months she spent there.

She decided to leave nursing and went on to study acting at the newly-established Manchester Polytechnic School of Theatre (now Manchester School of Theatre).

She was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017 for services to drama.

According to the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, her maternal ancestors played an active part in the 19th-century Irish Land War.