“I am very good at keeping secrets, except when I am drunk, when I will tell you absolutely anything.”
― Nicola Walker
“I don’t really have a treasured possession, but I do love my family’s proper old photo album. We all have hundreds of photos on our phones now, but you can’t beat the old albums stuffed with black-and-white wedding photographs and 1970s Polaroids.”
― Nicola Walker
“At home, people very rarely recognise me.”
― Nicola Walker
“The generation before me certainly told me that there would come a point when there were fewer parts, telling me to make hay while the sun shone. There was a time in my late thirties when I thought that it was something I had to get myself ready for, that things were going to slow down as I hit 40.”
― Nicola Walker
“I wish someone had got hold of me and said, ‘You know, children are really good fun. You will have a fantastic time, and you will still work.’”
― Nicola Walker
“I’ve always had a resting expression that either makes me look deep in thought or as though I’m about to fight you. I’ve lost count of the number of directors asking me what the problem is when all I’m doing is sitting still and being.”
― Nicola Walker
“It’s satisfying to watch a story where you feel like you’re a fly on the wall.”
― Nicola Walker
“I just want to carry on doing high-quality work.”
― Nicola Walker
“Once you’ve sat in a room annoying Derek Jacobi while he’s trying to do his crossword, you’re prepped for working with the greats.”
― Nicola Walker
“There are a lot of women – directors, producers, writers – involved in my career. They are all interested in telling good stories, and good stories involve men and women.”
― Nicola Walker
“When you’re working, you’re in the present, but you’ve always got one eye on where your next job might be coming from, and I don’t think that will ever go away.”
― Nicola Walker
“I get quite fearful about interviews, so I sought advice from other actors.”
― Nicola Walker
“We bought a sofa with the money I made from ‘Thunderbirds,’ and I’ve still got it, and we call it Thunderbird 1. That’s literally all I got out of the job.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’d do anything with Tom Courtenay.”
― Nicola Walker
“As I get older, I get happier.”
― Nicola Walker
“I am not a morning person.”
― Nicola Walker
“Breakfast is a battle. I never feel like eating, but I have now found my way to porridge. I have it with full-fat milk and banana.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’m married to a vegetarian, so if ever we go out to dinner, I go for kidneys.”
― Nicola Walker
“I was on a tour of a Restoration comedy in 1996, and in Moscow we stayed at the Metropole hotel, off Red Square. The food there was opulent, but in the Maly theatre canteen, there were just a few pieces of rye bread, peanuts, and gherkins. I stood in the queue and burst into tears.”
― Nicola Walker
“Roast potatoes – I can’t say no. At Christmas, I reach over for the fifth or sixth one, and I think I could keep going until I explode.”
― Nicola Walker
“Derek Jacobi is probably our finest actor.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’d be an absolutely appalling detective… Appalling.”
― Nicola Walker
“We lived in so many flats, and the more people you could get, the cheaper the flat was. Someone was always sleeping in the living room, and you’re always slightly hiding them when the landlord came round.”
― Nicola Walker
“When I bought my first little flat, it was two bedrooms, so I got Sarah Phelps to live with me. My years-later-to-be husband was slightly thinking, ‘Why are you inviting your friends to live with you?’ I was very resistant to leaving my friends.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’d really like to play Lady Macbeth.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’ve got a feisty face.”
― Nicola Walker
“You can’t escape your face.”
― Nicola Walker
“You just have to look at me to know what I am feeling. So I would be a useless policewoman or spy.”
― Nicola Walker
“I was never told that the purpose of school was to get a job at the end of it. What was pushed on me was a love of learning, probably because my parents didn’t have access to a great education.”
― Nicola Walker
“The confidence and charisma it takes to stand up in front of a group of children absolutely terrifies me.”
― Nicola Walker
“When I look back at the Nineties, I realise there wasn’t very much TV I wanted to do.”
― Nicola Walker
“I found myself at Cambridge, loved my course, and met these amazing people who got me heavily involved. I presumed I would have to go to drama school, but I did a play with my uni friends, who were doing lots of pub theatre in London, and through that met my agent. She said ‘Don’t go to drama school. I’ll get you a job’ and two weeks later she did.”
― Nicola Walker
“I can’t tell you the excitement to be in a new TV series or a play you’ve got to read for. That’s the best.”
― Nicola Walker
“Yes, I go a little bit crazy when I’m not working, which is an issue for me. My background is you go to work; that’s what you do.”
― Nicola Walker
“I was always about working. I like working. I don’t like being unemployed. I love acting.”
― Nicola Walker
“My whole family were from the East End, but they moved away when I was a child. They still cannot get their heads around the fact that I ran back to London as soon as I could, when I was 21.”
― Nicola Walker
“Filming in London is brilliant.”
― Nicola Walker
“High-end divorce is a closed world. When I tried to research it, I was really surprised about how little there is out there. I think that’s because of the nature of the subject matter – privacy is incredibly important to this level of client.”
― Nicola Walker
“In this industry, people like to look at different faces on their screens – even I do.”
― Nicola Walker
“Two of my dramas, ‘Unforgotten’ and ‘River,’ were airing at the same time, and Dad had read about my ‘success’ in a newspaper – he thought it was brilliant. I was thinking, ‘Does this mean I’m going to be put in a box for a bit now?’”
― Nicola Walker
“It’s now become a joke in my family that as soon as I finish a job, I’m on a loop saying, ‘I’m never going to work again’ – it drives everyone mad!”
― Nicola Walker
“’Unforgotten’ was a bit of a no-brainer. I’m a big fan of crime dramas, but often the ‘investigation’ part goes much too smoothly – and you don’t get that with this.”
― Nicola Walker
“If you could make telly as good as radio, it would be amazing – audio can do things so easily that television can’t.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’ve only ever been on a long-runner with ‘Spooks.’”
― Nicola Walker
“’Spooks’ was unique. It took up such a lot of your life – I think we did 10 episodes for the first few seasons. That’s six months of your life.”
― Nicola Walker
“’Spooks’ was very much of its time and rather unique, so I was more than happy to be in that as a long-runner – because I think we won’t have that sort of show again. I think it was really, really unusual.”
― Nicola Walker
“’Collateral’ poses lots of questions and does it within the format of a really good, tense thriller. It starts at a real pace, and it doesn’t let go.”
― Nicola Walker
“I would like to think that there are more women in positions of power, to actually get these projects off the ground that are more balanced, where the story is about men and women.”
― Nicola Walker
“When the acting all dries up, I won’t be going there – either to the police force or to the church. I’ll have to think of something else!”
― Nicola Walker
“’The Split’ is actually really hopeful – although it’s left me reeling slightly, thinking about what we do to each other in the name of love, within the contract of marriage.”
― Nicola Walker
“I find the whole ceremony of marriage a bit like going to work. Putting on a lovely dress and make-up, learning lines, someone doing your hair.”
― Nicola Walker
“There wasn’t really anything I wanted to do other than acting, which is ridiculous because there were no actors in my family, and we didn’t know anything about acting.”
― Nicola Walker
“It was really unusual that the crews on ‘Spooks’ were a real mix of men and women, and you’d struggle to see many women with parts that weren’t cliched back in the late ’90s.”
― Nicola Walker
“My dad always jokes that if I ever write an autobiography, which I’m not going to, it’ll be called ‘It’s Tough in the Middle.’”
― Nicola Walker
“I love being the first person to play a part. I really get a big thrill out of it.”
― Nicola Walker
“There aren’t many shows that encompass roles for a seven-year-old to someone in their 50s.”
― Nicola Walker
“We’re all used to seeing a lot of cop shows, some of them brilliant, some of them very generic.”
― Nicola Walker
“I completely respect the job our police do.”
― Nicola Walker
“My husband is an actor, and we don’t talk about acting at home.”
― Nicola Walker
“My two great fears are either not working or working on something that means you can’t do something else you really want.”
― Nicola Walker
“I noticed that, on ‘Spooks,’ there were a lot of women behind the camera and in different departments.”
― Nicola Walker
“Cornwall is my favourite place – I wish I could earn a living there.”
― Nicola Walker
“When I’m not working, as a family we are obsessed with jumping off rocks into the sea and doing dangerous things.”
― Nicola Walker
“My husband says I’m a grumpy lioness.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’m a proper Essex girl because my family was part of that great exodus from the East End.”
― Nicola Walker
“The people I’ve met who are divorce lawyers, there’s a sense of them having to look reassuringly expensive.”
― Nicola Walker
“I started when I was 21, and it was always about getting the next job – like most actors, that’s all it’s ever been for me.”
― Nicola Walker
“It always makes me laugh to think that I get to sit around and chat with people like Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi and get paid for it.”
― Nicola Walker
“I have to admit to the occasional need for ‘Come Dine with Me.’ I am the most atrocious cook, and that’s probably why I find it so entertaining. It looks exotic to me.”
― Nicola Walker
“Once I was asked to do celebrity rowing, where they taught people who had been to Oxford or Cambridge to row against each other. That sounded like too much hard work: really early mornings and having to be quite fit, which I’m not.”
― Nicola Walker
“When you’re a kid, you imagine acting to be singing and fighting and like the movies. Then you become an actor and get the reality, which is often a lot more mundane. But sometimes it’s really nice to run around with guns saving the world.”
― Nicola Walker
“When you’re both actors, it is feast or famine financially and emotionally in your marriage.”
― Nicola Walker
“My family moved out of London’s East End to a tiny village. The school I went to was supposed to be mixed gender, but there were hardly any boys born that year. So, yes, joining a youth theatre was a fun way to meet the opposite sex!”
― Nicola Walker
“I come from a family of scrap metal dealers, so becoming an actor seemed like a ridiculous thing to do, but I’d found the thing that gave me a kick, and I quickly became obsessed with it.”
― Nicola Walker
“Before I had my son, I became obsessed by this painting I’d seen in an art gallery. It was a lot of money, but I felt such a rush of adrenaline when I wrote the cheque to buy it. I thought I was going to gaze lovingly at it forever, but after just two weeks, I realised I didn’t really like it any more.”
― Nicola Walker
“People very rarely know my real name but recognise me as characters from my shows, such as ‘Last Tango In Halifax.’”
― Nicola Walker
“I live in dread that I might find myself in some sort of emergency, and everyone will turn to me and expect me to know what the correct procedures are.”
― Nicola Walker
“It can be tough to turn things down, but as an actor, being in demand is a nice problem to have.”
― Nicola Walker
“I could never be anyone I’ve played. I am so not a detective; I can barely get 200 yards from A to B with the help of Google maps, and I am just about the least observant person on the planet, so I never notice what people look like or how they walk or if they’re committing a crime in broad daylight.”
― Nicola Walker
“It’s totally different playing a lawyer and a detective.”
― Nicola Walker
“My make-up call as Cassie on ‘Unforgotten’ is 45 minutes, and on ‘The Split’, it’s considerably longer. They have to do your hair and your make-up. On ‘Unforgotten,’ I’m in and out, and I don’t have to worry about how I sit for the whole day so as not to crease the clothes.”
― Nicola Walker
“Most people feel like they’re out of step, so just have the conviction to go your own way.”
― Nicola Walker
“Don’t worry about fitting in – it’s completely over-rated.”
― Nicola Walker
“’Better do it than wish it done,’ is a phrase ingrained in my mind.”
― Nicola Walker
“The best thing my mum and dad did was to send me to the local youth theatre. I loved that; I felt I’d found the thing I really wanted to do.”
― Nicola Walker
“There’s a really sweet spot with acting where you’ve finished a job, and you’ve got another one coming up in three or four months’ time. That’s my favourite period of unemployment.”
― Nicola Walker
“Every interview I’ve done since I’ve turned 40, the journalist will say, ‘So, isn’t it amazing? Your career should be over, but you’re still working. Why do you think you have found a career at a time when a lot of women are slowing down?’”
― Nicola Walker
“I don’t have a preferred medium of work, but like all actors, I do like to move from one to the other if possible.”
― Nicola Walker
“My two girlfriends from university, Sue Perkins and Sarah Phelps, are both in the business – and are both stupidly busy. We talk on the phone a lot and try to get out to dinner together, but our preferred venue is one of our kitchens with a lot of tea.”
― Nicola Walker
“I’m a hoarder, but then, when it all gets too much, I turn into a ruthless chucker. I’m very good at clearing out and giving stuff away. But I’m equally skilled at shoving things in a cupboard, shutting the door, and calling that ‘cleared up.’”
― Nicola Walker
“I took a long time after ‘Curious’ to find something I really wanted to do.”
― Nicola Walker
“I want to watch telly that reflects the world I see.”
― Nicola Walker
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