Re: Summer 2013 | Page 8

apart from his drinking ,

he ’ s lovely

Think of the top TV shows of the last 15 years and it ’ s likely they have starred Julie Graham . We met up with her at the iconic Brighton Dome to chat about her work , other actors , politics and her favourite charity .

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Your mother was an actor so acting is obviously in the blood , how much did your mum inspire you ?

Not when I was younger , she inspires me now . I saw the job for what it was ; a job . Obviously I saw that she loved the job and she was successful at it , she was in Scotland ’ s first soap opera , High Living , which was on Scottish Television . But I never really wanted to do it .

It wasn ’ t really until I was older and I started going to drama school part-time that I decided that I wanted to do it . So , I was inspired more by my local theatre and watching all the plays that used to be on there . There used to be a company called 7:84 Theatre Company that used to do all these very political plays . We used to be taken there by our school . There was one production of Mary Stuart with an actress called Anne Mitchell in it who was one of my heroes . She was in a series called Widows , amongst many other things , and I remember seeing her in a wonderful play and thinking , “ Right , I really want to do this .” It was really atmospheric and it had a physical effect on me and I thought it was an amazing thing to be able to affect people in that way . So it was a sort of combination of both really , but certainly the theatre had a big influence on my wanting to do it .

Did your mum warn you off at all or did she encourage you ?

She never warned me off at all . She knew that I understood what it was like so she knew I was very realistic and that I was going into it with my eyes wide open . But she was very encouraging , very encouraging .

So what was your first paying role ?

The first job I ever did I got when I was still at school actually . I think I was 16 and the BBC came along to the school . They were doing this series called End of the Line and they were looking for kids from the local area to be in the drama . I had to go and audition and I got offered a part . So that was my first paying job , yeah .

What was the part ? Can you remember ?

I can barely remember . I think she was a bit of a tearaway but I can ’ t really remember to be honest . I just remember it being really exciting and that was my first paying job , although I wasn ’ t a member of Equity .

So was the young Julie Graham a tearaway as well ? Was it a good character match ?

It was a little bit typecast I suppose . My first professional job was for a theatre company called Borderline , which were quite a famous touring company in Scotland . So I worked with them for quite a long time .

Looking down the list of the top TV shows of the last 15 or so years , you seem to have been in quite a lot of them . Which one would you say was the most demanding to date ?

A theatre job is always much more demanding than telly , you have to be very physically fit to do them . You have to have a lot of stamina and you have to really look after yourself , especially your voice . Emotionally it ’ s very demanding to reproduce this thing every night . And you usually do eight shows a week so