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Julie Andrews
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Julie Andrews was born Julia Elizabeth Wells in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, on October 1, 1935. She was the daughter of Edward C. Wells, a teacher of woodworking and metal-crafting, and Barbara (Morris) Wells, a pianist and piano teacher. When she was four-years-old her parents divorced, and she went to live with her mother, who married Ted Andrews, a vaudeville entertainer. Her mother and stepfather performed together, and Andrews, who soon revealed an excellent singing voice, began participating in the family act, using the name Julie Andrews. She started taking singing lessons at the age of seven. She ... studied acting and ballet at the Cone-Ripman School in London.
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Julie Andrews is the last of the great Hollywood musical stars - her extraordinary career spans more than forty years. Her first film, "Mary Poppins", was Disney's most successful film, and in 1965 "The Sound of Music" rescued Twentieth Century Fox from bankruptcy. Three years later, "Star!" almost put the studio back under, and the leading lady of both films fell as spectacularly as she had risen. But Julie Andrews is nothing if not a survivor; and despite many setbacks - including the tragedy of losing her singing voice in 1997 after a botched operation - she's still a performer, recently starring in "Shrek and The Princess Diaries". Richard Stirling's deeply researched biography - based on many years of contact with Julie - is a frank but affectionate portrait of an enduring icon of stage and screen.
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Julie Andrews, as she was now known, made her radio debut in 1946, singing a duet with Ted Andrews on a BBC variety show. She gave her first performance as a solo artist at London's Stage Door Canteen, where she was seen by two members of the Royal Family, the mother and sister of the present Queen. The exquisitely self-possessed little girl with the crystal-clear voice was attracting the attention of serious theatrical management and was soon ready to make the move from provincial music halls to the theaters of London's West End. At age 12, Julie Andrews was cast in a musical revue, Starlight Roof, at the London Hippodrome. Her first appearance stopped the show, and the revue ran for over a year. Julie Andrews became the youngest performer ever to appear at a Royal Command performance, singing an aria from Mignon for King George VI at the London Palladium.
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Julie Andrews was destined to become entertainment royalty from a very early age. On December 5, 1946, at the Stage Door Canteen in London, Julie's first solo performance was attended by Queen Mother Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. The young star was eleven years old and already a veteran. By then she had developed a four-octave voice and was a well-known performer in the air-raid shelters of the capital as well as in the provincial English music halls, where she toured with her performing parents. "I had this freakish voice," recalls Andrews. "I was sort of a child prodigy who could belt out any aria you handed me." Immediately after the war, she began singing on the BBC with her father, and by the age of 14 she was performing at the London Hippodrome.
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Julie Andrews was born and raised near London. Her first marriage took place in an Anglican church. Despite these facts, there is little indication that she was even nominally Anglican. Robert Windeler's biography of Julie Andrews states the only prayers she ever says are cursory ones before going out on stage, and that she had "no religious upbringing whatsoever." However, as an adult, Julie Andrews did find a religion, as she became a devout convert to Freudian psychoanalysis.
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Actress Julie Andrews was best remembered for two career-defining roles that helped propel her to international stardom: her Oscar-winning turn in “Mary Poppins†(1964) and her Oscar-nominated portrayal of Maria yon Trapp in “The Sound of Music†(1965). Throughout her long career—which included equal measures of stage, screen and television performances, as well as music and books—Andrews constantly found new ways to develop her immense talents while avoiding the trappings of being typecast. Time and again, Andrews defied being pegged as the sugary-sweet do-gooder, excelling in dramatic turns, daring comedies and animated features, all the while carving out a career the likes of which many performers have only dreamed.
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