Julie Andrews

The snub that started it all

Julia Elizabeth Wells was born in Walton-on-Thames in 1935. Her mother was a pianist, and her stepfather was a tenor with a drinking problem who taught her to control her breath in the air-raid shelters of World War II. Walt Disney saw her on Broadway while she was performing in Camelot and decided no one else could be his magical nanny.

But before that, Jack Warner had denied her the role of a lifetime on the big screen. The mogul preferred Audrey Hepburn for My Fair Lady because Andrews didn't sell enough tickets outside the New York theaters. Warner believed her face wouldn't work in mainstream film.

That humiliation turned out to be her greatest victory.

In 1965, Andrews took the stage to accept the Oscar for Mary Poppins, while Hepburn watched the ceremony from home without even being nominated. The British actress thanked Jack Warner sarcastically for letting her go to work for Disney. And so began her dominance at the global box office.

The shoot that saved a studio

The shoot of The Sound of Music in 1965 was no bed of roses. Filming in Salzburg meant dealing with constant rain that delayed production for months and sent costs soaring. Andrews came back soaked and muddy every evening after shooting in the Austrian hills.

In the famous opening scene, the camera helicopter blasted her with propeller wind and dragged her through the mud again and again. But the film grossed more than 158 million dollars on its original release. That figure kept the studio Fox from disappearing into the financial black hole left by the shoot of Cleopatra years earlier.

During the 1970s, she sought roles that moved her away from the image of the perfect woman. Her husband, Blake Edwards, directed her in S.O.B. in 1981, where she agreed to a partial nude scene to blow up her governess image. Critics didn't always understand these moves, but she needed room to breathe outside the Disney corset.

The forced silence of 1997

Everything fell apart in an operating room in New York.

Andrews went in for a routine operation on vocal nodules, but the surgeon made an irreparable mistake. In an instant, she lost her soprano voice, and her ability to sing professionally vanished forever. The trauma plunged her into a deep depression that kept her out of the spotlight for years.

She sued the hospital, and in 2000 reached a confidential settlement for a multimillion-dollar sum. But the money didn't give back the four-octave range that had made her famous worldwide. So she had to reinvent herself from silence.

She had to learn to act with her voice.

In 2001, she accepted the role of Queen Clarisse in The Princess Diaries, and younger audiences rediscovered her. In 2010, she began working as a voice actress for the Despicable Me franchise, voicing Gru's mother. Her voice also narrated the secrets of London high society in the series Bridgerton between 2020 and 2024.

In 2022, she received the AFI Life Achievement Award at a ceremony in Los Angeles for her entire career. Her memoir, published under the title Home Work, revealed that she needed therapy for decades to come to terms with the weight of her public image. The actress lives mainly in Sag Harbor, New York, and has an estimated fortune of 30 million dollars.