Author:Lucy Ellis,Bryony Sutherland

From her BAFTA-winning television work, such as My Beautiful Son, to her big screen debut alongside Michael Caine in Educating Rita, her starring in Billy Elliot (both of which earned her Oscar nominations) and her portrayal of Mrs Weasley in the Harry Potter films, Julie Walters has worked with some of the greatest and most diverse actors and directors in the world today. In December 2005, at the British Comedy Awards, Walters - alongside longtime friend and television comedy partner Victoria Wood - picked up the Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award.

Raised in a strict Catholic family in working class Birmingham, Julie Walters abandoned a nursing course to study drama at Manchester Polytechnic and went on to join the Liverpool Everyman Theatre where she cut her teeth as an actress. Over the next decade, she experienced three marriage proposals, two long-term romances and a period of heavy drinking. At the end of 1984 she met sociology student Grant Roffey and had a daughter Maisie, who was traically diagnosed with luekaemia and had to undergo years of painful chemotherapy.

the authors have interviewed friends, teachers and colleagues to skilfully compile the first-ever biography of one of Britain's finest and best-loved actresses.