Dame Julie Walters yesterday opened up about her secret battle with stage-three bowel cancer after doctors gave her the all-clear.
In a candid interview The Mamma Mia! actress recalled seeing tears in husband Grant Roffey’s eyes after her “shock” diagnosis 18 months ago.
The star has previously described Grant, who she met in 1988 when he was an AA patrolman, as a “big softie”.
And she said: “I’ll never forget his face. Tears came into his eyes. So then I worried about him more.”
After the devastating news she says she tried to think optimistically: “You hold on to the positive, which was that [the doctor] said, ‘We can fix this’.”
Dame Julie – who turns 70 tomorrow – had 30cm of her colon removed by surgeons as she fought the disease.
And she admitted she had sometimes worried her “luck could run out” while she waited to have the surgery.
But the star breathed a sigh of relief this week when medics told her the cancer was gone thanks to the operation and chemotherapy treatment, which she had reluctantly agreed to have.
She said: “I’ve had a scan on Monday and it was clear.”
“If you catch colon cancer early, it’s one of the best cancers you can have.”
Dame Julie, who has a daughter, Maisie Mae Roffey, 31, with Grant, opened up to pal Victoria Derbyshire on her BBC show yesterday.
Famed for her roles in films including Educating Rita, Harry Potter and Paddington, said her cancer left her unsure she would play another major part.
It also brought back painful memories of the death of pal and comedy collaborator Victoria Wood in 2016.
She said it made her realise “how frightened she must have been” after being diagnosed with inoperable cancer.
Victoria Derbyshire, who herself developed breast cancer in 2015, chronicled her own battle with the disease at the time.
She was one of the few who knew about Julie’s condition and yesterday encouraged her to help viewers feel less embarrassed about getting checked.
Dame Julie laughed: “Doctors are used to bottoms... they’ve got one themselves.”
Urging others to seek help if they are worried she recalled how she refused to dismiss her own early symptoms.
“My discomfort was really slight,” she said. “You certainly wouldn’t go to A&E. But it shouldn’t be there.”
She later suffered stomach pain, heartburn and vomiting, and was referred to a gastric surgeon.
A scan revealed two primary tumours in her large intestine and that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.
Dame Julie underwent an operation and “had a foot taken out” of her colon. And she joked the anaesthetic made her feel “absolutely marvellous”.
“There was a bit of heroin in it. I was high as a kite.” She had been filming her latest project, The Secret Garden, when she was diagnosed.
A body double stood in for her as production continued while she recovered, but she realised: “This is more important, not the film.
“My perspective towards acting has completely changed,” she said. “I feel like the person before the operation is different to this person. The minute I was diagnosed, there was huge relief – it’s really strange – that I could get off this merry-go-round.
“It felt like I was stepping off something and I was wonderful.”
Her cancer saw her quit two upcoming projects and she admits it is “possible” she will not make another film, unless she can find a project that does not raise her stress levels too much. She said: “It would have to be something that didn’t have a killing schedule.
“I’m not saying I’ll never act again, but I don’t think I can go back to six days a week, five in the morning till seven o’clock at night. The stress of it.”
When she woke up after the operation, she asked a nurse about Love Island then watched an episode of the series. “I felt exhausted and a bit low,” she admits, but then came the dreaded chemotherapy, which Grant persuaded her to undergo.
“I took the first lot and I was shaking,” she said. “I felt like I was killing myself. My tongue swelled up – and I was doing a voice-over.”
Describing how having the disease made her recall Victoria Wood’s tragic death she said: “I thought of her loads, and how frightened she must have been. At least I could have an operation – they couldn’t operate on her.
“But the other thing I thought was, ‘God, the last time I saw her was in the hospital sitting by the bed... And I had it at the same time’.”
Now Dame Julie, is looking forward to turning 70 tomorrow and welcoming the thought of entering her eighth decade.
“I kind of like it in a funny sort of way,” she said. “People will perceive it as old, but I don’t. I feel like I’ve got here – I’m 70 – great.”
