Dame Julie: ‘Why I kept my cancer secret’
Dame Julie Walters opens up on why she hid her devastating diagnosis from her family and the world
Dame Julie Walters is one of the most well-loved, funny and talented actresses in our country, having starred in a range of hit films, from Billy Elliot to Mamma Mia! and the Harry Potter series.
So it came as a huge shock earlier this year when she revealed she’d been secretly recovering from bowel cancer.
But it wasn’t just the public that 70-year-old Julie was hiding her devastating diagnosis from.
Julie didn’t even tell her daughter, Maisie, or her two older brothers, Tommy and Kevin, until after she had gone through the operation to remove the tumours from her lower intestine. Instead, she told Maisie she needed to have her appendix removed.
Julie explained to the Telegraph Magazine, ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of everyone worrying – particularly my daughter. I didn’t want to upset people around me. I wanted to keep it small.’
The only person who did know was Julie’s husband, Grant Roffey, who she told in the car after he had waited for her to come out of her doctor’s appointment.
Recalling the devastating moment she had to tell him of her diagnosis, on the Victoria Derbyshire show, she said, ‘I’ll never forget his face. Tears came into his eyes and I thought, “Oh, Grant!” So I then worried about him, more than me.’
But Grant was Julie’s rock throughout her chemotherapy and operation, which she says were ‘frightening’ – and he stayed with her even through her ‘dramatic moments’. She says, ‘Grant was with me every step. I wanted to wait until I was in the right place and then I had my dramatic moments.
‘If people fussed, I’d shout I was fine. If they treated me like I was fine I’d complain. I still wasn’t totally better. But, really, I didn’t want to have to talk about it until I’d processed it myself.’
Remembering loved ones
When Julie found out she had cancer, doctors discovered she’d actually been living with it for four years, which means she would have had it at the same time as her friend
‘IF PEOPLE FUSSED, I’D SHOUT’