'Harry Potter' Star Julie Walters Might Quit Acting For Good

Julie Walters is opening up in a brand new interview, and revealing she thinks that getting cancer was almost a blessing for her.

The 70-year-old actress, who has starred in Harry Potter, Mamma Mia and most recently, The Secret Garden, spoke about how her diagnosis forced her to slow down in her career.

Julie was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer in 2018 which required her to have chemotherapy and undergo surgery. She is now cancer free.

“I had a weird reaction to it,” she recalled to The Times. “Part of me was going, ‘Oh my God! I’ve got cancer! Oh my God!’ And I’m dealing with the shock of that, and it’s all systems go to have it treated. But there was also an element of going [she sighs and smiles, as if hugely relaxed], ‘I don’t have to do any more work. I can actually get off this treadmill.’ Because I had been working really hard and it seemed like a big excuse not to do anything. Cancer trumps everything. So there was a huge relief in it, which is strange. But I needed something to stop me.”

Julie added that “it was a feeling that, ‘I’m in my sixties and these parts are coming in, so I should do it.’ It was almost as if somewhere you know that you’re going to be stopped. I must do it before I can’t. Whereas now I think, ‘Oh, gosh, I don’t need that.’ And my husband constantly says, ‘You don’t need to do that.’ And so I don’t. And I think once you get something like cancer, something has to change. Otherwise you’re just going to get it again.”

She also admits that she thinks working so much and the stress that came with it contributed to her cancer diagnosis.

“The oncologist said to me, ‘What do you think has caused the cancer?’ And the first thing that came to my mind was acting. Acting caused it. Because of the way that I approach it. I have to be totally in it. Everything has to be just so. It’s very stressful,” Julie says. “You’re immediately above the parapet. You’re being judged. It’s a stressful job and I don’t sleep when I’m working. It’s not good for me.”

Click inside to see what Julie Walters said about leaving show business for good…

However, while Julie is ready to wrap her acting career up, she “never says never” about quitting for good.

“After I had the operation and I was thinking about the future, I thought, ‘I don’t want to work again,’” she says. “Unless it’s another ‘Mamma Mia’!”

Here’s the latest that we know about a possible Mamma Mia 3…