A stage actor of thirty years who came to the screen late and is mostly asked to sit across a table and represent the state. In Kneecap she showed what she can do with that, against a boy who will not speak English.
Fi1m perspective
Josie Walker's best screen minutes so far are spent losing. In Kneecap (2024) her Detective Ellis sits across an interview table from Liam Óg and tries every tone she has, patient, then bored, then furious, and he answers each one in Irish with a face of perfect helpfulness. The scene is his joke, but it only works if her face keeps changing, and it does: each new tactic arrives with a small fresh hope that this one will land, and each hope dies on screen. We laughed until the person beside us complained, and the reason was not the boy's line but the detective's slow realisation that a language she regards as a museum piece is being used against her, right now, and winning.
She was a stage actor first and for a long time. The work began in musicals in the early 1990s, The Phantom of the Opera in Manchester in 1992 and London in 1996, a tour of Cats in 1995, then The Beautiful Game in 2000. The National Theatre followed, Rose Narracott in War Horse in 2012 and The Ocean at the End of the Lane in 2020, alongside Matilda the Musical and Margaret New in Everybody's Talking About Jamie in 2017. Screen came late, from Where Hands Touch in 2018, with television including Call the Midwife, This Is Going to Hurt, Dalgliesh and Andor. Casting directors have looked at her and seen mothers, officers, nuns and detectives: grounded women who stand for something larger than themselves.
That is a compliment with a cost. In Belfast (2021) she is Auntie Violet, part of the warmly acted household around Jude Hill's boy, and our review singled out Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds and did not mention her, which is an honest measure of what the part allows. In The Wonder (2022) she is Sister Michael, a nun in a story about faith and a fasting girl. Talking about Margaret New, Walker said the real woman was "almost touching sainthood, so there's not an awful lot of drama", and that they wanted "more flaws and more of a journey". On screen she has rarely been given the journey. She has been given the table and the institution behind it. Kneecap handed her perhaps ten minutes and she put a whole person's exasperation into them, which suggests the fault lies with the parts.
We have seen far more of the type than of the actor, and we say so. Until a film gives her something the length of what the stage has given her for three decades, our view rests on one room in a Belfast police station. That room was enough to make us start looking for her name.
Biography
Josie Walker is an actress born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and began her career in theatre, appearing in West End productions including The Phantom of the Opera and Cats.
She has received three Laurence Olivier Award nominations for her work in musicals, including for The Beautiful Game (2000) and Everybody's Talking About Jamie. On screen, her credits include Call the Midwife (2014) as Officer Owen, Belfast (2021) as Auntie Violet, The Wonder (2022) as Sister Michael, This Is Going to Hurt (2022) as Non-Reassuring Trace, Andor (2022–2025) as the Force Healer, and Kneecap (2024) as Detective Ellis.
