On a day like today in 1950 was born Julie Walters, the English actress, comedian, and author who played the role of Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter saga.
Julia Mary Walters (born 22 February 1950), known professionally as Julie Walters, is an English actress, comedian, and author. She is the recipient of four British Academy Television Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two International Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Fellowship, and a Golden Globe. Walters has been nominated twice for an Academy Award, once for Best Actress and once for Best Supporting Actress.
Walters rose to prominence for playing the title role in Educating Rita (1983), a role which she had originated on the West End. She has appeared in a number of films, including Personal Services (1987), Stepping Out (1991), Sister My Sister (1994), Billy Elliot (2000), Harry Potter series (2001–2011) as Molly Weasley, Calendar Girls (2003), Wah-Wah (2005), Driving Lessons (2006), 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). On stage, she won an Olivier Award for Best Actress for the 2001 production of All My Sons.
On television, Walters collaborated with Victoria Wood; they appeared together on several television shows, including Wood and Walters (1981), Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985–1987), Pat and Margaret (1994), and Dinnerladies (1998–2000). She has won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress four times, more than any other actress, for My Beautiful Son (2001), Murder (2002), The Canterbury Tales (2003), and her portrayal of Mo Mowlam in 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 the 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 as part of ITV's 50th anniversary celebrations. She starred in A Short Stay in Switzerland (2009), which won her an International Emmy for Best Actress.
Walters was made a Dame
(DBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to drama.
More information: BBC America
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.
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.
They went on to appear in their own Granada Television series, Wood and Walters, in 1982. 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.
Walters first serious acting role on TV was in Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff in 1982. A role that launched her to become a national treasure, Walters starred opposite 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 an Academy Award for Best Actress-nomination.
In 1985, she played Adrian Mole's mother, Pauline, in the TV adaptation of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. 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 TV 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.
In 1998, she starred as the Fairy Godmother in the ITV pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. From 1998 until 2000, she played Petula Gordeno in Victoria Wood's BBC sitcom Dinnerladies. In the late 1990s, she featured in a series of adverts for Bisto gravy.
More information: Independent
In 2001, Walters won a Laurence Olivier Award for her performance in Arthur Miller's All My Sons. She received her second Oscar nomination and won a BAFTA for her supporting role as the ballet teacher in Billy Elliot (2000).
In 2002, she again won a BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress for her performance as Paul Reiser's mother in My Beautiful Son.
Walters played Molly Weasley, the matriarch of the Weasley family, in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the only film in the series not to have starred Walters. In 2003, the BBC voted her portrayal of Molly as the second-best screen mother.
In 2003, Walters starred as a widow (Annie Clark) determined to make some good come out of her husband's death from cancer in Calendar Girls, which starred Helen Mirren.
In 2005, she again starred as an inspirational real-life figure, Marie Stubbs in the ITV1 drama Ahead of the Class.
In 2006, she came fourth in ITV's poll of the public's 50 Greatest Stars, coming four places above frequent co-star Victoria Wood.
In 2006, she starred in the film Driving Lessons alongside Rupert Grint (who played her son Ron in Harry Potter), and had a leading role in the BBC's adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel The Ruby in the Smoke.
In 2007, Walters starred as the mother of author Jane Austen, played by Anne Hathaway, in Becoming Jane. Walters played Mary Whitehouse in the BBC Drama Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story (2008).
In July 2012, Walters appeared in the BBC Two production The Hollow Crown as Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts I and II.
Set in contemporary London, Walters portrayed Mrs. Bird, the Browns' housekeeper, in the critically acclaimed Paddington (2014). Walters reprised her role for the sequel, Paddington 2 (2017), which has also received universal acclaim.
Set in London during the depression, Walters played Ellen, Michael's and Jane's long-time housekeeper, in Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Set in 1947 England, Walters starred with Colin Firth in The Secret Garden (2020).
More information: Express
but it's a drop in the ocean.
Julie Walters
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