Julia Hales didn’t know she had Down’s syndrome until she was 21. “My mum and dad sat me down and told me that I was quite special to other people,” remembers the 42-year-old actor. “I said, ‘Oh, OK.’ But I was really angry at first. I didn’t want to look like a person with Down’s syndrome. It took me a long time – but I have accepted it and I’m celebrating it now.”
All her life, her parents had “mainstreamed” their daughter, sending her to the same school as her three siblings and encouraging a fierce independence in her. She’d always thought she was just like the rest of the family, so finding out that her physical appearance was related to a condition that only she had was a shock. Her father – lovingly, gently – told her that, if she really wanted, there were plastic surgery procedures available to alter the signs of Down’s syndrome in her features: “I thought about it, but decided not to – and I just kind of got on with the rest of my life.”
