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Dame Julie Walters has revealed that she was diagnosed with stage three bowel cancer 18 months ago.
The Oscar-nominated actor discussed her cancer battle and chemotherapy treatment in a new interview with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire .
Walters said she had two primary tumours in her large intestine, and was so shocked when she was diagnosed that she thought doctors “must have made a mistake”.
She was filming her new movie The Secret Garden
Show all 27 1 /2727 films you'll never believe won an Oscar 27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Alice in Wonderland (2010) It’s only 108 minutes long, but Alice in Wonderland manages to feel longer than a Lord of the Rings extended cut. There are no laughs and there’s no enjoyment factor beyond, “Oh, look, it’s Johnny Depp being weird and quirky again!” It might be a visual marvel, but Alice in Wonderland shouldn’t have won an Oscar for Best Art Direction because anything that would encourage people to see this movie is wrong.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Beetlejuice (1988) Tim Burton's Beetlejuice won an Oscar for the only category it was nominated in – Best Make Up. While the film was deserving of far more recognition, its status as an Oscar-winner may come as a surprise to many.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Death Becomes Her Death Becomes Her might not have given Meryl Streep one of her 20 Oscar nominations, but it did win Best Visual Effects ahead of Alien 3 and Batman Returns. The award seems quite rogue given all we get is a stretchy neck and a woman with a hole in her body, but then it was the 1990s. For her part in the film, on-screen legend Streep described the shoot as tedious and “like being at the dentist”, and claimed it would be her “first, last and only” effects-driven movie.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Dick Tracy (1990) Warren Beatty spearheaded this live-action version of Dick Tracy, which featured an all-star cast including Al Pacino (pictured). Despite negative reviews, the film racked up an impressive seven nominations and won in three categories: Best Art Direction, Best Make Up and Best Original Song.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them JK Rowling's extension of the Harry Potter universe is a far cry from the adaptation of her original wizarding book series. However, Fantastic Beasts won an Oscar for Best Costume Design with its first film – a win made even more surprising by the fact that, despite being nominated for 12 Academy Awards across eight films, the Harry Potter series never won a single one.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar The Golden Compass This adaptation of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights might have a rating of 42 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but it still managed to win an Oscar for its visual effects. The Academy was impressed by the computer-generated animals and grand vistas of the Arctic. But the flashy CGI doesn’t take away from the fact the film makes one of the most fantastical books ever published utterly dull. So unpopular, this box-office bomb caused its studio, New Line Cinema, to merge with Warner Brothers.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar The Grinch The Grinch might be the greatest Christmas film, but it’s still not a great film. Still, Jim Carrey’s furry green get-up did win it the Oscar for Best Makeup. Considering it took around eight hours to apply each day, you could say it was deserved. Jim Carrey told Graham Norton that a CIA operative had to be brought in to teach him specialist techniques for enduring torture and said the procedure “was like being buried alive every day”.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar The Exorcist When taking into account the Academy's inability to nominate horror films over the past few decades, it's increasingly impressive to learn the film considered one of the most shocking of all time won two back in 1974. The Exorcist is a terrific film that deserved its wins for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. It received a further eight nominations, including Best Picture.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Happy Feet Mumble the penguin might look more real than the animations that came before him, but he also looks more lifeless. Happy Feet was one of the first films to use motion capture technology instead of Walt Disney style hand-drawn animations. But who wants an exact replica when you can have big white eyes and toothy grins? Apparently the Oscars do, because they gave Happy Feet Best Animated Film. Granted, the scene where a baby Mumble raps ‘Close to the Edge’ is cute.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Harry and the Hendersons (1987) It's doubtful that even the makers of Harry and the Hendersons expected their film about a family's encounter with the cryptozoological creature Bigfoot to win an Oscar. But it did (Best Makeup).
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar The Imitation Game The Imitation Game is as difficult to decipher as a heap of unbroken code. It features a number of historical inaccuracies, which range from the benign to the outright offensive. One scene shows a detective using Tipp-Ex in a time period where it hadn’t been invented yet. One plotline slanders Alan Turing’s memory by suggesting he covered up for a Soviet spy. But despite the film's confusing diversions and ridiculous accusations, Graham Moore won for his screenplay.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1985) While a far cry from the four Oscar wins awarded to Raiders of the Lost Ark, sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – considered to be the weakest of Steven Spielberg's original trilogy – took home the award for Best Visual Effects.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Innerspace (1987) Innerspace hasn't endured as a must-watch classic like similar films that were released in the 1980s, but it has an Oscar win to its name – the science-fiction adventure, starring Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan and Martin Short (pictured), won Best Visual Effects.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Men in Black It does seem weird that Men in Black won an Oscar for makeup considering the two main characters aren’t wearing any. But when you think of all the oozing purple aliens they shoot at, it starts to make more sense. The action film also won an Oscar for Best Musical Score thanks to contributions from Will Smith himself (though we all know the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme tune is his only award-winning sound).
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar The Muppets The plot of The Muppets is essentially: “One day a boy and girl fell in love and together they overcame an obstacle of some sort”. While the old films featured big-name celebrities, in the reboot there is a feeling of “will this do?” Jack Black is paraded out like he were Hollywood royalty, even though at this point in his career, he was probably accepting offers to turn Christmas lights on. It managed to win an Oscar for the song 'Man or Muppet'. To be fair, there were only two others nominated in the category.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Pearl Harbor There’s nothing the Oscars loves more than a war film, so that explains why they would give a film as bad as Pearl Harbour three awards. Michael Bay’s movie manages to make his retelling of the Pearl Harbor disaster orientate around a self-indulgent love triangle. Bay has no excuse for the poor quality, the film cost more to make than the real Pearl Harbour cost the US government.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Back in 2007, we were all far too love-drunk on the image of Jonny Depp in eyeliner because somehow we convinced ourselves that Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was a good film. No one finds Johnny Depp in eyeliner attractive anymore so we can all be a bit more honest: it’s not good. The overly complicated, rambling sequel was nominated for four Oscars and ended up beating Superman Returns to win Best Visual Effects.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Rango (2011) Johnny Depp's reptilian underdog Rango beat out a boot-wearing pussycat as well as a panda with an affinity for kung fu to win Best Animated feature at the Oscars.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Song of the South (1946) Song of the South has long had controversy heaped upon it with many believing the film's African-American characters to be racist and offensive stereotypes. Because of this, it might come as a surprise to learn the film is an Oscar winner, taking home the Best Original Song trophy for "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah".
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Spider-Man 2 There haven’t been many Oscar nominations for superhero films, which makes sense because they often aren’t very good. Aside from Peter and Mary’s upside-down kiss in the pouring rain, Spiderman 2 is boring. Still, it managed to beat Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and I, Robot to win Best Visual Effects.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Suicide Squad After Suicide Squad won an Oscar “Suicide Squad has more Oscars than…” became a meme. Twitter pointed out that the Marvel anti-hero team-up has won more gold men than Gary Oldman and Willem Dafoe combined. To be fair it didn’t win Best Film, but Best Makeup. Regardless, that anyone managed to bear the unbearable Joker and the overly sexualised Harley for long enough to notice what anyone looked like is a miracle.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) Sweeney Todd took home the best Art Direction Oscar, an impressive feat considering other Tim Burton films have been far more deserving of the prize, but failed to even be nominated.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Tarzan Toy Story 2’s 'When She Loved Me' is sad enough it could make Ross Kemp cry, but it didn’t get the Oscar in 2000. Instead, Tarzan won Best Music for Phil Collin’s 'You’ll Be In My Heart' – a song which lacks all the emotional resonance of drum hit 'In the Air Tonight'. In an extremely bizarre decision, Collins’ soundtrack was inserted in rather than sung by the characters, because co-director Kevin Lima thought a singing Tarzan “would be ridiculous”. Because a man swinging from trees like a monkey isn’t ridiculous?
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar U-571 A French-American submarine films tarring Matthew McConaughey and Jon Bon Jovi isn't a film you'd ordinarily assume would win an Oscar, but U-571 proved an exception. It won Best Sound Editing.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar The Wolfman Rick Baker won Best Makeup and Hair for his work turning Benicio Del Toro into a ferocious wolf. After multiple director changes and other backstage drama, Joe Johnston’s much-troubled production nearly didn’t get made. Humankind would have been better off if they hadn’t managed to resolve their issues. The Wolfman is poorly paced and divulges into CGI overload for an action-heavy climax that is too grizzly for its own good.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar The Young Victoria This film is about as passionless as the Victorian era itself. Watching it is to spend an hour and three-quarters waiting for it to start. The Young Victoria was meant to reimagine the Queen as a young woman full of life, but director Jean-Marc Vallée ends up replacing all of Emily Blunt’s smouldering mischievousness with drab reserve. Luckily, two-time Oscar winner Sally Potter saved the period drama by winning yet another costume design award.
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27 films you'll never believe won an Oscar Ex Machina (2015) Nobody expected the fantastic Ex Machina to win anything at the Oscars, but when it was named as the victor in the Best Visual Effects category, it went down as the best twists of the evening. It beat Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Martian, The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road
Walters described the reaction of her husband, Grant Roffey. “I’ll never forget his face,” she said. “Tears came into his eyes.”
The actor said that while she had always been optimistic that she would recover, she worried about not coming round from anaesthetic after surgery. She said that she had “30cm taken out of my colon” in hospital.
Walters had chemotherapy, which she said was “fine” and had not caused hair loss. She added: “I’ve just had a scan, and I know that [I’m] clear.”
Her treatment meant that she was cut from certain scenes in The Secret Garden and she also missed the premiere of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
Walters said the diagnosis had “completely changed” her perspective towards acting. “The person before the operation is different to this person,” she said.
She revealed her relief at taking a break from work. “I was due to do two big series... and there were two films. And I just didn’t have to do any of it. And that was wonderful,” she said.
Hinting at a possible retirement, she said if she did another film after The Secret Garden “it would have to be something I’m really engaged with”.
“I’m not saying I’ll never act again,” she said. “But I certainly don’t think I can go back to [a film that requires working] six days a week, five in the morning till seven o’clock at night.”
The Secret Garden , which also stars Colin Firth , will arrive in UK cinemas on 10 April 2020.
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