The actor, who has played characters on both sides of the debate, says the UK needs a conversation about euthanasia and assisted suicide
About a decade ago, Dame Harriet Walter, the 73-year-old star of stage and screen, decided to make a living will. The will, also known as an advance decision, informs family, carers and doctors of a person’s wish to refuse specific treatments should they become too ill to communicate those choices. (It stops short of requesting help with end of life; euthanasia and assisted suicide remain illegal in the UK.) But, when it came to actually completing the details of her living will, Walter always found something else to do.
“I had the will sitting in my filing cabinet for about three or four years before I got round to it,” says Walter, who made her name in the theatre but has recently had eye-catching roles in the TV shows Succession, Killing Eve and Ted Lasso. “It’s not something you really want to look at, it’s not something you want to think about. But it will be good to know that there’s something in place that you could use when the time comes. Then you close that filing cabinet.”
