Why I couldn’t tell the family about my ‘gift’ of cancer

Tom Bryant

DAME Julie Walters has told how she kept her cancer secret from her family because she didn’t want to worry them – but sees her illness as a “gift”.

The actress, 70, decided not to tell her daughter or two brothers that she had stage three bowel cancer after being diagnosed in 2018.

The only person she shared the news with was her husband, Grant Roffey.

Dame Julie said: “People deal with it in different ways. I couldn’t bear the thought of everyone worrying – particularly my daughter.

“I told her I needed to have my appendix removed because there was a problem.

Tears

“I couldn’t say the word ‘cancer’ to her. She said, ‘OK, Mum.’ I knew she knew it probably didn’t sound right, but she also knew I wasn’t going to talk about it and she didn’t push me.”

Dame Julie’s daughter Maisie Roffey, 31, is her only child with Grant, 63.

Dame Julie recalled telling him about her diagnosis. “I walked into the car park where Grant was waiting, and when I said the word ‘cancer’ I saw his eyes fill with tears.

“We just sat there numb. But what we knew was that we would go through it. I think we both knew not to be emotional, just be practical, deal with it, keep going. Get it out.”

After surgery and chemotherapy, Dame Julie has been given the all-clear. She said of her ordeal: “It’s changed me because it’s changed the way I live my life. I’m the same but different. I’m not rushing about all the time, getting up at 5am and coming home at midnight. I’ve let a lot of noise go.

“I’ve gone from thinking of my cancer as a shock and something terrible that happened to me, to thinking in a way it was a gift.”

Dame Julie and Grant, who was an AA patrolman when they met in 1986, live on an organic farm in West Sussex. Julie, whose screen hits include Educating Rita, Calendar Girls, Billy Elliot, and Mamma Mia!, says her diet has changed as a result of being ill.

She told the Telegraph: “I saw a doctor about what food I should and shouldn’t eat. I was told not to go vegetarian [because of missing out on certain types of omegas that she needs], but I avoid red meat and I have lots of greens.

“I try not to eat sugar because it’s cancer’s best friend, but that’s hard. Apart from that I just think I was lucky that I had bowel cancer

Fighting back... Dame Julie, 70, earlier this year, left, and at the Baftas in February 2018, shortly before she was diagnosed with stage three bowel cancer

because it is one there can be very good results with.

“I was told I’d had it for four years before I was diagnosed. Four years.”

Being ill also meant she couldn’t finish her scenes for The Secret Garden, a movie based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel.

It is due in cinemas in August and also stars Colin Firth.

Operation

Dame Julie said: “I did return to the set a month after my operation. I stood in this tight, woollen full-length Victorian-style costume in 90-degree heat, looking terrible and feeling even worse because I just wasn’t up to it.

“I had no idea why I had said I could carry on. Then I went home and told my agent I didn’t think I could do anything any more. And I’ve been at home ever since.”

She is currently enjoying “pottering, putting my feet up and watching telly”.