Mamma Mia! Why Julie won’t say no

HAVING gone back on plans to retire at 60 Dame Julie Walters is now worried she’s taking on too much work.

The star, whose latest smash Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is released later this month, didn’t expect her career to keep going from strength-to-strength, particularly at the age of 68. She knows she needs to manage her workload effectively so as not to drive herself into an early grave.

“It has been so busy in the last couple of years. I wouldn’t do things for the sake of working, it’s just that great things have come up,” she tells Good Housekeeping. “I can’t not do Paddington and I can’t not do Mary Poppins. I keep getting offered great work. I wouldn’t kill myself over it but it has been good.”

However, the woman who was awarded her long overdue damehood last year, did reveal that she was worried about returning to her role in Mamma Mia this summer.

“I couldn’t see how it could work and what they could do with us,” she added. “So my first reaction to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again was, ‘Oh God, no, it’s going to be awful.’ But I think it’s fantastic!”

And after admitting “it was heaven” working with Cher on the film, she says most of the all-star cast wish they could Turn Back Time too, a decade ago to the original when they were all rather slimmer. “Everybody was holding in their stomachs when we met!”

The full interview appears in the August issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale July 4.

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