Julie Dawn Cole
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| Julie Dawn Cole | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 October 1957 Guildford, Surrey |
Julie Dawn Cole (born 26 October 1957) is an English television, film and stage actress with a nearly-three-decade career, who began as a child performer in what remains her best-remembered movie, 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, playing Veruca, the spoiled and obnoxious daughter of Mr. Henry Salt.
A native of the Surrey town of Guildford, Julie Dawn Cole was twelve when she was cast in the iconic role during the film's pre-production in the first half of 1970 (she celebrated her 13th birthday eight weeks into the movie's 11½-week filming schedule in the southeastern German state of Bavaria). The film premiered in New York on 30 June 1971 and in London the following week, with Julie chosen to present a bouquet of flowers to Princess Margaret at the Royal Premiere. Her salary for playing Veruca was an extremely modest £600, moving her to speculate years later that her mother probably blew the entire paycheck for family tickets to the Premiere. As an unscheduled, self-presented bonus, she did, however, keep two props from the film, the "Everlasting Gobstopper" and the "Wonka Golden Ticket", even though she was told to return them. She still has them to this day.[citation needed] She and the film's other young "leading lady" American Denise Nickerson (playing Violet Beauregarde) both had crushes on Willy Wonka's Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum, also an American) and alternated days spending time with him during breaks in filming.[1]
Of the five child actors with speaking roles in the film, Julie Dawn Cole is the only one to have continued performing, accumulating numerous, primarily television, credits in soaps and mini-series—gaining some brief notoriety a few years later, at the age of 19, playing Rowella in the second series of BBC's popular 1975–77 costume drama Poldark, in which her nude scene, although tastefully presented, raised some eyebrows, especially since it was shown before the traditional 9 p.m. adult watershed.
In her long career, she has accumulated a number of theatrical credits as well as some work in pantomime. She is also sought-after for voice-over work, in which her mellifluous tones have served her in good stead. After qualifying in 1998 as a fitness instructor, she has been working in the 2000s on various projects, including the 2005 ITV series Fat Families as fitness advisor to one of the title families. In 2006, she was seen on the popular soap Emmerdale and appeared in a television advertisement for car insurance comparison website confused.com (she is the woman with the dog).
A mother of two, Julie Dawn Cole has told interviewers that whenever her daughter acts bratty, she calls her "Veruca".[1]
