Class act

AWARD-winning actress Julie Walters, who plays a teacher in a new ITV1 film, could have ended up in the classroom instead of the theatre and TV. When she went to study drama at the then Manchester Polytechnic - where she met friend and long-time colleague Victoria Wood - she found it was a dual course on acting and teaching.

"I wanted to act," she says, "but my mother was thrilled that there was a teaching qualification, at least I had that to fall back on. It's true though, isn't it? Acting is a dire profession."

Walters, who turns 55 in February, now finds herself playing legendary teacher Lady Marie Stubbs in ITV1's Ahead Of The Class. This tells the real life story of Stubbs' remarkable efforts in saving St George's School in West London from closure five years after the murder of headmaster Philip Lawrence in 1995.

Walters plays the single-minded Stubbs who, along with her team, takes old-fashioned discipline and inspirational ideas into a school where gang culture holds more authority than the teachers. "I got sent the book first of all," recalls the actress. "I opened the first page and a bottle goes in somebody's face, almost on her first day as she's walking through the playground.

''We know that she's going to get the school off what they call special measures, that's why the book and the film happened, but you think, how is she going to deal with all this? I couldn't put it down, I found it so moving and inspiring."

Walters' own experiences at school weren't happy ones. Before going to secondary school, she attended a private Catholic preparatory in her native Birmingham, where she spent most of her time petrified of the nuns.

"That was very unhappy, I didn't like that. I was frightened most of the time and I still can't do long division. I didn't dare tell the sister. It was awful," she says. Secondary school was better. "That was normal. The teachers were women and men. All normal,'' she laughs. But the school didn't like her and they chucked her out in the sixth form. "It was really for not being there. Somebody did mention subversive though, and I thought, I wonder what that means, I'll have to look it up. I was never subversive. I didn't know enough or think enough. I didn't know anything about anything. It must have been that I didn't show a good example, that's the only thing I can think of."

Now she has a daughter - 15-year-old Maisie, her only child with husband Grant Roffey - she has worries other than school ones. "I think school's been OK for Maisie, she's quite grounded really. But you can't help but fret about your daughter.

But no, she talks to us. If they cut that off, it's worrying. We make sure we talk to her. She shares in my life and my world, I don't just go away. She came to Africa with me when I did forthcoming Richard E Grant-directed film Wah-Wah.

"But still I can't help but worry. She's at that age now where she's going out and she's got a boyfriend and I'm thinking, 'Don't break her heart'. Do I like the boyfriend? Yes, he's lovely. We know him and he's a gorgeous boy."

She lives with her husband and daughter on a 70-acre organic farm in Sussex which Grant gave up his sociology studies to manage. Although she takes plenty of time off between jobs to spend time with her family, she has little involvement in the farm itself.

"I get involved with the talking about the farm and we're always discussing things. Occasionally I go out and look at the girls - the cows - or whatever, and I love the farm. But I don't do much really," she says. As Ahead Of The Class goes out, Walters will be in London starring in Victoria Wood's West End musical version of comedy classic Acorn Antiques. But the busy schedule of a West End musical won't keep Julie away from her family for too long. While she's playing Acorn favourite Mrs Overall from Tuesday to Saturday evenings and Saturday matinees, Victoria Wood will play her the rest of the time.

After Acorn Antiques, however, there will be another well-deserved break with the family. These breaks seem to involve not much more than walking around her beloved countryside, reading and watching TV. She admits to watching the soaps and The Bill. "I used to want to do Corrie because I loved it. Now it would be too much of a commitment. Maybe I could get behind the bar once or twice. It would be massive though, it's really hard work.

"I wrote to Crossroads when I was 16 asking if they wanted me to come down and show them how to do Birmingham accents. None of them had one even though it was set in Birmingham. They wrote back saying 'No thank you' and it wasn't even signed. I've never forgotten that. But a soap's not a bad job, I wouldn't have said. I'd have been quite happy probably if I'd have been taken up by Coronation Street at 24 when I started acting. I'd still be there now."

* Ahead Of the Class is on ITV1 on Sunday at 9pm.

Published: 27/01/2005