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Julie Andrews

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Julie Andrews

Dame Julie Andrews, DBE (born October 1, 1935) is an Emmy, Grammy and Academy Award-winning English actress, singer, and author, who became famous for her starring roles in the Broadway musical My Fair Lady and the musical films Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965). Currently, she is the Official Ambassador of the Happiest Homecoming on Earth for Disneyland and recently made her debut as a theatre director.

Early life

Andrews was born Julia Elizabeth Wells in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, the daughter of Edward Wells, an actor, and Barbara Ward, a pianist. Her parents enrolled her in voice lessons to develop her abilities. Her earliest public performances were during World War II, entertaining troops throughout the United Kingdom with fellow child star Petula Clark.

Andrews made her professional solo debut at the London Hippodrome in a new musical revue called Starlight Roof in 1947. On November 1, 1948, she became the youngest solo performer ever to be seen in a Royal Command Variety Performance, at the London Palladium, where she performed for King George VI, and members of the Royal Family.

Andrews appeared on the radio programme Educating Archie. She also appeared in the London West End production of Cinderella, and made her American debut starring in the Broadway production of The Boy Friend in 1954. Later in her career, she returned to The Boy Friend, directing productions at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York, in 2003, and at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, in 2005.)

Mid-1950s

In 1956, she was cast in the Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner musical My Fair Lady as Eliza Doolittle, opposite Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins. The show was a musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and became the smash hit of the decade. Andrews became an overnight sensation. During her run in Lady, she also starred in two television musicals: High Tor with Bing Crosby and Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.

1960s

In 1961, Lerner and Loewe again cast her in a period musical, as Guenevere in Camelot, opposite Richard Burton and newcomer Robert Goulet. After a slow start, cast appearances on Ed Sullivan's television show ensured that the show would ultimately become a hit.

File:JulieAndrews.jpg
Andrews with (clockwise) Matthew Garber, Karen Dotrice and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins

When the starring role in the film version of My Fair Lady went to Audrey Hepburn, she received the "consolation" of starring in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins after Disney staff watched The Ed Sullivan Show Camelot special, thinking she would be perfect as Poppins, winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress as a result. (Rave Broadway reviews aside, studio head Jack Warner declined to hire Andrews for My Fair Lady because "Audrey Hepburn had never made a financial flop."[1]) After beating Hepburn for the Golden Globe, Andrews got a measure of (as Poppins songwriter Richard M. Sherman put it) "sweet revenge": In closing her acceptance speech, Andrews—nervous and hoping the joke would play well—smiled and said, "and, finally, my thanks to a man who made a wonderful movie, and who made all this possible in the first place, Mr. Jack Warner."[2] Her performance also won her the Academy Award for Best Actress for 1965. At the Grammy Awards, she and her co-stars won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children for Mary Poppins. She was nominated for an Academy Award again, the following year, for her role as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music, (with actors Christopher Plummer and Charmian Carr), briefly becoming one of the most sought-after stars in Hollywood. As a result, she appeared in the three-hour epic Hawaii, based on James Michener's best selling book, co-starring with Max von Sydow and Richard Harris. It was the highest grossing film of the year. She later starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain with Paul Newman (both in 1966), and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), with Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing.

1970s, 1980s and 1990s

Star!, a 1968 biopic of Gertrude Lawrence, and Darling Lili(1970), co-starring Rock Hudson and directed by her husband, Blake Edwards, are often cited by critics as major contributors to the decline of the movie musical. Both were damaging to Andrews' subsequent career and, despite several starring roles in musical and non-musical films—including some directed by second husband Edwards, such as The Tamarind Seed, 10, Victor/Victoria, and S.O.B. (1981 film), in which she appeared topless[1] — she was seen very rarely on screen during the 1980s and 1990s.

She starred in her own variety series (for one season, on the ABC network in 1972 - 1973, winning 7 Emmy Awards), but the greatest critical acclaim accorded her TV work was for her variety show specials with her close friend, Carol Burnett.

In 1983, she was chosen as the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year by the Harvard University theatrical society.

In 1995, she starred in a very commercially successful run in a stage musical version of Victor/Victoria. It was her first appearance in a Broadway show in 35 years. Opening on Broadway on October 25, 1995, at the Marquis Theatre, it later went on the road on a very successful world tour. When she was the only Tony Award nominee for the production, she declined the nomination because she felt the entire production was snubbed. She appeared in the production, which was directed by her husband, Blake Edwards, for almost the entire run. She was replaced, during her vacation, by friend Liza Minnelli, and months later, by Raquel Welch. The production has been recorded and is available on DVD.

Revival

Director Garry Marshall cast her in The Princess Diaries, opposite Anne Hathaway, and its sequel; playing the role of the Queen of an imaginary country, both of which proved to be major box office hits. She has also starred in two made-for-television movies based on the character of Eloise (playing her Nanny), the child who lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. In 2004, she lent her voice in the role as Queen Lillian to the highly successful animated hit Shrek 2, the sequel to the 2001 smash.

Recent activities

In the 2000 New Year's Honours, despite her long exile in the United States and Switzerland, she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE).

Andrews has been struggling to recover her five-octave singing voice following surgery to remove vocal fold nodules from her throat, but had a short tour of the USA at the end of 2002 with Christopher Plummer, Charlotte Church, Max Howard, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The year before her tour, she and Plummer reunited for the first time since The Sound of Music in a live television adaptation of On Golden Pond, which aired on CBS in the United States.

Dame Julie's career is said to have suffered from typecasting, as her two most famous roles (in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music) cemented her image as a "sugary sweet" personality best known for working with children. Her roles in Blake Edwards' films could be seen as an attempt to break away from this image: In 10, her character is a no-nonsense career woman; in Victor/Victoria, she plays a woman pretending to be a man (who is working as a female impersonator); and, perhaps most notoriously, in S.O.B., she plays a character very similar to herself, who agrees (with some pharmaceutical persuasion) to "show my boobies" in a scene in the film-within-a-film. For this last performance, late night television host Johnny Carson thanked Andrews for "showing us that the hills were still alive", alluding to her most famous line from the title song of The Sound of Music.

Andrews recently directed a revival of The Boy Friend, the musical in which she made her Broadway debut in 1954. The production was created in 2003, at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York. It was then remounted at the Tony Award winning Goodspeed Opera House in 2005, where she developed it further. From there, the show toured to cities in North America, including: Boston, Chicago and Toronto through 2006. The producition included costume and scenic design by good friend and former husband, Tony Walton.

Andrews received Kennedy Center Honors in 2001 and has been chosen to receive the Screen Actors Guild's SAG Life Achievement Award in 2007.[2] She also appears in the 2002 List of "100 Greatest Britons" sponsored by the BBC and chosen by the public. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6901 Hollywood Blvd.

In a recent (2006) interview, she said: "To be honest with you, I've never been busier in my life," Andrews said. "I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to learn from all of that. It did bother me. I can't say that I wasn't devastated. Singing, with an orchestra, being able to sing, was what I'd known my entire life. Whatever happened, I think I found so much to keep me feeling that I'm contributing still."

Filmography

File:Pd2 poster.jpg
Julie Andrews with Anne Hathaway in a promotional poster for The Princess Diaries 2

Upcoming:

Preceded by Academy Award for Best Actress
1964
for Mary Poppins 		Succeeded by

TV work

Stage appearances

Books

  • Mandy (1973) (Bantam)
  • The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles (1978)
  • Little Bo : The Story of Bonnie Boadicea (1999) ISBN 0-7868-0514-5
  • Dumpy the Dumptruck (2000) ISBN 0-7868-0609-5 (several others in this series)
  • Simeon's Gift (2003) ISBN 0-06-008914-8
  • Dragon : Hound of Honor (2005) ISBN 0-06-057121-7
  • The Great American Mousical (2006) ISBN 0-06-057918-8

Notes

  1. ^ "My Fair Lady (1964) at Reel Classics". Retrieved 2005-12-18.
  2. ^ Mary Poppins 40th Anniversary Edition DVD.
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