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Dear Julie,

The main thing I want to look back and tell you is: calm down, there is more to life than performing. I know that as an aspiring young actress you think it’s all a matter of life and death, but it’s not. Don’t put such huge pressure on yourself and lose stones in weight before a play. When Michael Caine tells you to pace yourself, listen to him. There’s a scene in Educating Rita where you have to cry. And if you start crying in preparation from the minute you wake up, you’re not going to have any tears left when the moment comes, and you’ll look like an awful red blob.

Don’t feel that you have to be performing when you’re off stage. With age and wisdom I’ve learned you have a choice about whether or not you do that. I know you love cracking jokes, getting drunk, dancing wildly and being the life and soul of the party. But you can just sit there sometimes. You’re not doing yourself a service when you use yourself up like that.

You’re going to feel very at home doing comedy. Don’t pay any attention to people who say women aren’t funny, because they’re just scared of female humour. But you musn’t rely on the laughs too much because different audiences will pick up on different things and some will be pretty quiet. Don’t think it’s a disaster if they’re not roaring in the aisles the whole time. When you go on to do Wood and Walters with Victoria Wood you’ll get some fairly bewildered audiences – elderly people who come to watch television programmes filmed at lunchtime. You’ll hear quavering voices asking ‘who are they?’ and there will be a day when the warm-up act gets so exasperated trying to raise a laugh from them he’ll take his trousers down and show them his bottom and they still won’t make a sound. So you have to remember that the real audience is going to be on the sofa in front of the television.

Don’t be intimidated by people you admire when you work with them. Actors like Michael Caine are very unstarry. Meryl Streep might seem like the Queen of Actors but you’ll have enormous fun singing ABBA songs round the piano with her when you film Mamma Mia! So just believe in yourself and get on with it.

Love,
Your Wiser Self

Further reading...

That's Another Story
by Julie Walters
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Buy now