Julie Andrews
The English star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, with a career spanning stage, screen and books.
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via Wikipedia: Julie Andrews · see source
Dame Julie Andrews (born Julia Elizabeth Wells, 1 October 1935) is an English actress, singer, author and theatre director. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her film debut in Mary Poppins (1964) and followed it with The Sound of Music (1965), becoming one of the biggest box office draws of the 1960s. Her honours include an Academy Award, a BAFTA, three Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards and seven Golden Globe Awards. She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2022, and Queen Elizabeth II made her a Dame in the 2000 New Year Honours.
Lore & Background
Andrews was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. After her parents divorced during World War II she went to live with her mother and stepfather, Ted Andrews, whose surname she took, and the family entertained troops in wartime. Her stepfather paid for lessons at the Cone-Ripman School and with the soprano Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen, and she also trained in ballet, ballroom and tap.
From 1945 she sang unbilled with her parents, sometimes standing on a beer crate to reach the microphone. She appeared in the West End in 1948 and on the radio programme Educating Archie from 1950 to 1952. Her Broadway debut came in The Boy Friend (1954), and she became a Broadway star as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Queen Guinevere in Camelot.
Did You Know?
- She was billed as "Britain's youngest prima donna" early in her Broadway career.
- She starred in the Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical Cinderella in 1957.
- Her memoirs are Home (2008) and Home Work (2019).
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Julie Andrews (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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