Julie Walters makes caring women funny, impatient and capable of being difficult, most persuasively in Billy Elliot. We value her comic timing and her willingness to be awkward; the familiar family-film roles can ask too little of her.
Fi1m perspective
In Billy Elliot (2000), Julie Walters lets Mrs Wilkinson take a boy seriously without becoming agreeable for his benefit. Her briskness gives the lessons some comedy and keeps the kindness from becoming sugary. We were moved by the lessons with Billy, because Walters lets the teacher care about his progress without becoming soft or flattering. The performance makes a persuasive case for giving her women with opinions and impatience, rather than asking her merely to reassure everyone around her.
Comedy and the wish for a better life already meet in her breakthrough film, Educating Rita (1983). Her work with Victoria Wood in sketches and sitcoms gave her sharp comic timing plenty to do. Boys from the Blackstuff (1982), Alan Bleasdale's drama, established her early dramatic credentials. Television work with Bleasdale and Alan Bennett helped build a reputation substantial enough to make the later casting as reassuring older women seem a limited use of her.
Billy Elliot gives those abilities a particularly useful job, since the film is often in danger of overdoing its sentiment. Hall writes the teacher and pupil with a warmth less forced than some of the family confrontations, and Daldry lets Walters and Jamie Bell be awkward together. Neither needs to be charming throughout a lesson. Their humour and irritation make the instruction feel like work, with two people trying to get something right. We recommend the film for them and the dancing, though even their company cannot make every attempt to please an audience feel earned.
Her later family-film roles include Molly Weasley in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and Mrs Bird in Paddington in Peru (2024). Those parts fit the familiar casting of Walters as the supportive or eccentric older woman. Molly, in particular, gives her less to do than her strongest work suggests she could manage. Paddington in Peru is kind and brisk, but we would not choose it as an introduction to Walters. Start with Mrs Wilkinson, and do not expect to be indulged.
Biography
Julie Walters is an English actress. Born on 22 February 1950 in Smethwick, she trained as a nurse before studying English and drama at Manchester Polytechnic. She rose to prominence in the title role of Educating Rita (1983), which she had originated on stage.
Walters is known for playing Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011) and Mrs Bird in Paddington (2014), Paddington 2 (2017) and Paddington in Peru (2024). Other film roles include Billy Elliot (2000) and Mamma Mia! (2008). On television she collaborated frequently with Victoria Wood. She has won four British Academy Television Awards for Best Actress, two British Academy Film Awards and a BAFTA Fellowship, and received two Academy Award nominations. She won a Laurence Olivier Award for her stage performance in All My Sons (2001). She was made a Dame in 2017.
