The Hilarious Way Julie Walters Celebrated Receiving Her Damehood
Earlier this week, Julie Walters received an accolade that we'd all been calling for for years - the veteran actress was finally made a dame by Buckingham Palace.
The legendary star has starred in huge films including Mamma Mia, Mary Poppins, and Harry Potter throughout the course of her decades long career, and made a name for herself in various TV shows including the hilarious Dinnerladies.
So it really was only right that she was presented with the highest honour from the Queen recently, for her services to art and entertainment.
Speaking after the ceremony on Tuesday 7th November, Julie admitted her disbelief about what had just taken place.
She confessed, "I can't take that in. The most exciting time was when the letter came, I looked at it and thought 'what?' because it's that sort of very formal speak, 'what does this say?' then I saw dame and I thought 'bloody hell'. That was the most exciting bit.
And the actress also revealed how she celebrated the exciting news - although it was a little more low-key than we might have expected...
"Somebody emailed me to say how did you celebrate? I weeded the garden."
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The 67-year-old also shared with the Press Association just how it felt to meet the Queen, and also revealed what she talked about with the 91-year-old monarch. And it turns out that the royal is just as much of a fan of Julie's as we are!
"It's fantastic, it's not really real. It was slightly nerve-wracking - 'when do I curtsey?' But everyone is the same. It's one of those things where you feel relieved [when you've done it], then you look back and think 'how fabulous'.
"I thought 'I wish my parents were here'. It was so numbing.
"The Queen said 'It's so marvellous that you've got this, I'm so pleased' and 'How long have you been doing acting?' I said '43 years' and she said 'In so many different things, well done.'"
However, despite not doing much celebrating when she received news of the accolade, Julie told the press that she was planning for a nice night out after the ceremony.
"I'm working at the moment, we're filming Mamma Mia! We were in Croatia but we are back at Shepperton now, a bit of a comedown after Croatia, so I'm not going to go back to work today...
"But we are going to have something to eat and that's it. They (the cast) all love it, they are all going mad. They were all joking about it, as you can imagine, there is lots of this (curtseying) going on."
Amy Hunt is an experienced digital journalist specialising in homes, interiors and hobbies. She began her career working as the features assistant at woman&home magazine, before moving over to the digital side of the brand where she eventually became the Lifestyle Editor up until January 2022. Amy won the Digital Journalist of the Year award at the AOP Awards in 2019 for her work on womanandhome.com.
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