Julie Walters Bücher

The number-one Sunday Times bestseller Her mum wanted her to be a nurse so that is what Julie did. But in her heart she had always wanted to be an actress and soon she was on stage at the local theatre in Liverpool. Her career snowballed with highlights that include Educating Rita, Billy Elliot, Harry Potter, Acorn Antiques, Dinner Ladies and Mamma Mia! She has been nominated for two Oscars, been awarded multiple BAFTAs and a Golden Globe, plus been honoured with a DBE. This is the heart-warming and funny story of that journey.

Oscar-nominated star of Educating Rita and Billy Elliot's darkly funny debut novel.

Julie Walters has been delighting audiences on screen and on stage for more than 25 years, and has been described as Britain's most popular actress and comedienne. Now she tells us her own story, in her own words. She was born in 1950s Birmingham, daughter of an austere Irish Catholic mother, and was sent to school in a convent. She wanted to be an actress from a young age, but to appease her mother she first went into nursing—that didn't last for long, and she soon joined Liverpool's Everyman Theatre. West End success followed, and she quickly replicated her success on film, earning an Academy Award nomination for her role in <i>Educating Rita</i>. Julie's collaborations with her close friend Victoria Wood have given audiences many unforgettable characters, and she's recently charmed a new generation of fans playing Mrs. Weasley in the Harry Potter films, alongside Meryl Streep in <i>Mamma Mia!</i>, co-starring with Helen Mirren in <i>Calendar Girls</i>, and co-starring in <i>Billy Elliot</i>. A natural writer with an instinctive sense of timing, Julie's memoirs are warm, moving, painfully felt, fiercely intelligent—and totally entertaining.

Alison Oddey's interviews with prominent performing women, span generations, cultures, perspectives, practice and the best part of the 20th century, telling various stories collectively. Stand ups, classic actresses, film and television personalities, experimental and alternative practitioners discuss why they want to perform, what motivates them, and how their personal history has contributed to their desires to perform. Oddey's critical and analytical introductory essay examines themes of performers' identities, displacement, acting as playing, differences between theatre, film and television performance, attitudes towards and relationships with audiences, and working with women directors. In several interviews the additional challenge of motherhood emerges as an important subtext in the performing lives of these women.