Julie: I have won my secret battle with bowel cancer
Star tells of shock diagnosis and urges others not to fear stigma of checks
JULIE Walters revealed yesterday that she has been given the all-clear after being treated for advanced bowel cancer.
The 69-year-old actress spoke of her shock diagnosis 18 months ago, urging people who thought they had symptoms to get themselves checked.
Ms Walters said that she must have already had tumours developing when she visited her best friend Victoria Wood as the comedienne was dying of an inoperable form of cancer aged 62 in 2016. A year later she saw her GP for indigestion and a ‘slight discomfort’, which over the subsequent 12 months developed into stomach pain, heartburn and vomiting.
Doctors who performed a CT scan and a colonoscopy found two primary tumours in her large intestine. She was told she had stage three cancer as it had spread to nearby lymph nodes.
In a recorded interview on Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC2 show, Ms Walters said she thought doctors had made a mistake when they told her their diagnosis.
‘First of all, shock,’ she said. ‘And I thought, “Right”. Then you hold on to the positive which was that [the doctor] said, “We can fix this”.’ She said she would never her husband Grant Roffey’s tears when she broke the news. The couple have been married for 23 years and have a daughter, Maisie Mae, 31.
Ms Walters – whose films include Educating Rita, Billy Elliot, Calendar Girls, Mamma Mia and the Harry Potter series – had surgery in which a 12in section of her colon was removed. She was then given a course of chemotherapy tablets. ‘I will never forget taking the first lot – my hand was shaking,’ she admitted. ‘I felt like I was killing myself.’
The treatment caused her tongue to swell but she did not lose her hair, she told Ms Derbyshire – who was successfully treated for breast cancer in 2015. Ms Walters said for anyone who thought they had symptoms, ‘you’ve got to go and get things checked’.
If caught early, survival rates can be higher than nine in ten. Referring to the stigma of being examined, she said: ‘Your bowel is part of your digestive system, it’s just what digests your food. Doctors are used to bottoms. They’ve got one themselves.’
Ms Walters, who appeared in many of Victoria Wood’s TV proforget grammes including Acorn Antiques and Dinnerladies, said her diagnosis had made her think of what her late friend went through.
‘I thought of her and how frightened she must have been because at least I could have an operation,’ she said.
‘They couldn’t operate on her cancer... and so I did think about that. 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.
‘[If she had known I had it] it would have given her hope. It’s comforting [to speak to other people who are going through the same thing].’ Ms Walters was filming The Secret Garden when she was diagnosed. She was cut from some scenes and replaced by a body double in others.
She kept the diagnosis a secret by blaming her absence on a ruptured hernia, as she ‘wasn’t ready to talk about it’ because it was ‘too tender and too private’.
She said her ‘perspective towards acting has completely changed’ and it is possible The Secret Garden – which is released in April – may be her last film as she scales back her work.
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