Harry's Place Arts

As the chilly matriarch in Sister, My Sister. She is, unsurprisingly, rather good good.

Have there been any sightings of Julie Walters where she played a nasty cold bitch?

dinnerladies!! still northern tho

KB
She plays a pretty selfish and cruel character in dinner ladies.
She would be a dreadful Thatcher but a brilliant Anne Widdecombe.
I think you missing the point. Julie’s skill is to give warmth to characters like Whitehouse and play her from her point of view. She never thought she was awful
I have met Julie and she is delightful. A true working class lass.

I’ll echo Golden Gordon’s mention of JW’s portrayal of Brenda’s mother in the superb “dinnerladies”. Not only was this a character with few discernible redeeming features, the character was a true grotesque. Sadly, only Victoria Wood seems to recognise Walters’s versatility.

Also what is wrong with been typecast ?
I cannot see Alan Bennett playing Brickbat in Snatch.

My point about the Mary Whitehouse docudrama, bio telly pic or whatever you call it that as soon as I heard Julie Walters was going to pay Mary Whitehouse I knew she was going to be played for sympathy, and and the part was probably written that way.

However, I haven’t seen Dinner Ladies so haven’t seen Julie playing a grotesque.

Don’t actors get sick of being typecast? Kristen Scott Thomas gets sick of playing a posh bitch. The typecast must envy actors like Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep who don’t get typecast and get to play all sorts of women.

Though of course Alan Bennett playing a minder, say, or a boxer, would be a bit weird. Or Ross Kemp starring in La Cage Aux Folles.

Like all such “warm, and human and dead loveable and outspoken and Northern” Thespians she lives in London and has no intention of moving back. As for typecast, this charge is never much laid at the feet of male actors who abound and rarely play anyone else in or out of a saddle or raincoat.

To the geographically and aurally challenged ‘Southerners’ here, the otherwise warm, human and dead lovable Julie Walters is from Smethwick, a district of Birmingham, which is in the Midlands, the West Midlands to be precise. Ergo, she is not Northern but a Midlander. The North starts around the latitude of the Humber. Which is a river which runs into the North Sea… Oh never mind.

‘I cannot see Alan Bennett playing Brickbat in Snatch.’

Erm, that’s Brick Top.

Still, it would make for some interesting dialogue …

‘Make me a cup of tea, Errol. And can I have a couple of custard creams with them too? The one’s Auntie Gladys bought from Waitrose?’

There used to be this on-going skit on a Radio 4 satire programme where Alan Bennett, Thora Hird and Mr Pettigrew from No 47 would put down the macaroons and go and chase the mafia or the CIA or carry out targeted assassinations.

Well, Queen Boadica was both outspoken and Northern, so there are two points in common with Julie Walters’ usual roles.

“Have there been any sightings of Julie Walters where she played a nasty cold bitch?”

In Alan Bleasdale’s GBH, she played quite a hard, cold mother figure. She was ostensibly a nicely dotty, Irish Catholic woman, but she chose to hide from her son behind many layers of denial, making her unreachable to him, and causing him considerable anguish.

Okay, so she wasn’t Hitler.

“Warm and human and dead and loveable”, that’s called contrary unity and classic!

I’ve heard of Marjorie Mowlem. Who is this Maureen?

One night a came home after “the Boys from the Blackstuff” had begun. Who was that woman playing the name part’s wife in this week’s personal story? Only when the credit’s went up did the penny drop that it was Julie Walters. Previously I had only seen her doing short funnies with Victoria Wood. Waht a talent.

Like a good many who play on being “warm, and human and dead loveable and out-spoken and Northern” (V. Wood step forward) she makes certain not to live there.