50 Fun Facts About Julie Andrews

In which 1964 film did Julie Andrews make her feature film debut?

Mary Poppins. Walt Disney saw her on Broadway in Camelot and offered her the part; when she told him she was pregnant, he held the film until after the baby was born.

Which character did Andrews play in The Sound of Music?

Maria von Trapp. Andrews had found the stage show 'rather saccharine', and had even sent it up in a 1962 TV sketch, three years before the film made her its star.

What was Julie Andrews's birth name?

Julia Elizabeth Wells was named after her two grandmothers. She became Julie Andrews at about ten, taking her stepfather's surname when she joined the family's stage act.

Which actor played Captain von Trapp opposite Andrews in The Sound of Music?

Christopher Plummer mocked the film for years as 'The Sound of Mucus', yet he and Andrews stayed great friends until his death in 2021.

What family secret did Andrews first reveal in her 2008 memoir?

Her dad wasn't her real father. As a teenager, driving her mother back from a party, she learned that their host was her biological father, and resolved that the man who had raised her would always be her dad.

What kept knocking Andrews flat as she filmed the hilltop opening of The Sound of Music?

A helicopter's downdraft. Each time the camera helicopter circled back for another take it flattened her into the grass, and she admitted to growing more and more irritated.

Which pop star sang a Sound of Music medley at the 2015 Oscars before Andrews walked out to embrace her?

Lady Gaga sang four songs from the film for its 50th anniversary, and her hug with Andrews set off the busiest moment of the night on Facebook and Twitter.

What did 12-year-old Andrews sing to stop the show at her 1947 London Hippodrome debut?

An opera aria, the polonaise from Mignon. The producers dropped her from the revue just before it opened, then put her back in, and she stopped the show on the first night.

In 1948 Andrews became the youngest soloist yet to appear in what?

A Royal Variety Performance. At 13 she performed for King George VI at the London Palladium, and was then asked to lead the whole company in 'God Save the King'.

On which BBC radio comedy, starring a ventriloquist's dummy, was Andrews a regular from 1950 to 1952?

Educating Archie made a radio hit of a ventriloquist nobody could see. The dummy was called Archie Andrews, and people, Julie recalled, took her for his sister.

In which pastiche of 1920s musicals did Andrews make her Broadway debut on the eve of her 19th birthday?

The Boy Friend. Reluctant to leave England at 18, she would sign for only one year instead of two, which left her free just as the makers of My Fair Lady came looking for a leading lady.

Which role did Andrews create on Broadway in My Fair Lady in 1956?

Eliza Doolittle. When the 20-year-old floundered in rehearsal, director Moss Hart dismissed the company for 48 hours and drilled her alone, scene by scene, until she found the character.

Which star got the lead in the 1964 film of My Fair Lady because the studio thought Andrews too little known?

Audrey Hepburn took the part, with most of her singing dubbed by Marni Nixon. She was not even nominated for the Oscar, while Andrews won Best Actress that same night for her Disney debut.

Whom did Andrews pointedly thank in her Golden Globe speech for her 1964 Disney debut?

Jack Warner had passed her over for the film of My Fair Lady, so she thanked him for making it all possible 'in the first place'. After a stunned pause the room erupted, and Warner laughed as hard as anyone.

More than 100 million people watched Andrews in which 1957 TV musical, written for her by Rodgers and Hammerstein?

Cinderella went out live on CBS in March 1957, while Andrews was still playing My Fair Lady on Broadway eight times a week.

Which role did Andrews create in the 1960 Broadway musical Camelot?

Guinevere. Ticket sales were slow until Andrews and Richard Burton, her King Arthur, performed scenes on The Ed Sullivan Show, after which the box office took off.

What did author P. L. Travers tell Andrews by phone about playing her magical nanny?

"You've got the nose for it" came straight after "Well, you're much too pretty, of course." Travers rang the hospital to say so the day after Andrews gave birth.

Andrews turned down a cameo in the 2018 sequel to her Disney debut to avoid upstaging which star?

Emily Blunt. 'This is Emily's show,' Andrews told director Rob Marshall, turning him down at once so that nobody would look past the new nanny for the old one.

Which of her films did Andrews call her favourite, a view shared by her co-star James Garner?

The Americanization of Emily was a black-and-white anti-war comedy in which she did not sing a note. Andrews took it straight after her Disney debut so that she would not be typecast as a nanny.

In which Austrian city was The Sound of Music filmed in 1964?

Salzburg, where rain was a constant headache for the crew: on some days, Andrews recalled, they were lucky to get a single shot.

Which director made the 1966 thriller Torn Curtain, starring Andrews and Paul Newman?

Alfred Hitchcock had not chosen his stars: Universal insisted on Andrews and Newman, and he later complained that the pair had no chemistry.

In which 1966 epic did Andrews play a missionary's wife?

Hawaii, from James Michener's novel, was one of the biggest hits of 1966. One of its extras was a local unknown, Bette Midler, who used the work to fund her move to New York.

Andrews's 1968 film Star! was a biopic of which stage performer?

Gertrude Lawrence, the British musical-comedy star. The film reunited Andrews with the director of The Sound of Music, but audiences stayed away and the expensive musical flopped.

Which director, Andrews's second husband, made Darling Lili, S.O.B. and Victor/Victoria with her?

Blake Edwards. Their first film together, Darling Lili, was a costly flop, but the partnership it began lasted 41 years, until his death in 2010.

What was the profession of Tony Walton, Andrews's first husband, whom she married in 1959?

Set designer. Walton designed the costumes and street sets for her 1964 Disney debut, and long after their divorce he was still illustrating her children's books.

Andrews hesitated over the lead in which 1971 Disney musical, then said yes too late to get it?

Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Afraid of being typecast, she wavered over playing its apprentice witch, and by the time she rang back to accept, Angela Lansbury had the part.

What had ABC done to The Julie Andrews Hour before it won seven Emmys in 1973?

Cancelled it after one season. Reviewers loved the show, but its ratings were dismal even after a change of time slot, so the axe had already fallen when the seven Emmys arrived.

With which comedienne did Andrews make TV specials in 1962, 1971 and 1989?

Carol Burnett. Lying in wait for director Mike Nichols by a Washington hotel lift, the pair staged a passionate kiss, only for the doors to open on a stranger whom Burnett swore was the First Lady.

In Victor/Victoria (1982), Andrews's character Victoria Grant passes herself off as what?

A male female-impersonator: a penniless soprano plays a man who plays a woman, and the act makes her a hit in 1930s Paris.

In which 2018 superhero blockbuster did Andrews secretly voice a giant monster?

Aquaman. Her casting was kept quiet until weeks before release: the producers wanted the Karathen, the beast guarding a lost trident, to speak with the voice of a classic British actress.

Why did Andrews turn down her 1996 Tony nomination for Victor/Victoria?

Her whole show had been snubbed: hers was its only nomination, so she announced from the stage that she would rather 'stand with the egregiously overlooked', gesturing to the cast around her.

What cost Julie Andrews her famous singing voice in 1997?

A throat operation, meant to cure hoarseness from her Broadway run, went wrong and left her voice permanently damaged. She sued the surgeons, and the case was settled in 2000.

Andrews turned down the role of Aunt Emma, later played by Joanna Lumley, in which Leonardo DiCaprio film?

The Wolf of Wall Street. Martin Scorsese offered her the part, but she was recovering from ankle surgery and 'just wasn't ready' to work, though she said she would have loved to do it.

In the 2000 New Year Honours Andrews received what title?

Dame Commander of the British Empire. After decades in America she had not thought herself eligible, and she collected the honour at Buckingham Palace at the same ceremony as Elizabeth Taylor.

What character did Andrews play in The Princess Diaries films?

Queen Clarisse Renaldi. Andrews has said she agreed after meeting director Garry Marshall, before she had even seen a script.

Who shares Andrews's duet in The Princess Diaries 2, her first song on film since losing her singing voice?

Raven-Symone takes over 'Your Crowning Glory' after Andrews half-talks, half-croons the opening. The song was written within a single octave for her, and she nailed it on the first take.

Which character did Andrews voice in Shrek 2 and its sequels?

Queen Lillian, Fiona's mother. The prim queen gets an action beat of her own in Shrek the Third, freeing the captive princesses by headbutting a hole in the prison wall.

In the Despicable Me films, Andrews voices the hard-to-please mother of which character?

Gru. The star of two of cinema's warmest roles plays his cold, never-impressed mother Marlena, a part she returned to in 2017 and 2022.

Which gossip-writing narrator does Andrews voice in Netflix's Bridgerton?

Lady Whistledown. Andrews was the first actor cast and is heard but never seen: the first season ends by revealing that the gossip sheet is really written by Penelope Featherington.

In the 1998 London stage production of Dr. Dolittle, Andrews supplied the voice of which character?

Polynesia the parrot. Andrews never set foot on stage: her lines were recorded in advance and spoken by a mechanical bird from Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

What is the title of Andrews's 2008 memoir of her early years?

Home. Far from sugary, it describes a wartime childhood with an alcoholic stepfather and a family living on her earnings, and it topped the New York Times bestseller list.

Who is Andrews's co-author on most of her children's books, including The Very Fairy Princess?

Her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. They began in 2000 with Dumpy the Dump Truck, a series illustrated by Emma's father, Andrews's ex-husband Tony Walton.

Andrews wrote her first children's novel, Mandy, to pay a forfeit set by which member of her family?

Her stepdaughter Jenny set the penalty after Andrews lost a family game: 'Write me a story.' The tale of an orphan who finds an abandoned cottage became a 1971 novel, dedicated 'To Jenny, because I promised'.

At Long Island's Bay Street Theater in 2003, Andrews made her debut in which role?

A stage director. At a theatre co-founded by one of her children, she revived the very musical in which she had made her own Broadway debut almost fifty years earlier.

Which major career honour did Andrews finally receive in 2022?

AFI Life Achievement Award. The tribute was first set for April 2020 and twice postponed by the pandemic, so she was 86 by the time she finally collected it.

Andrews's 2011 Grammy win was for which kind of album?

Spoken-word: a children's collection of poems and lullabies read aloud, made years after she lost her singing voice. Her only earlier Grammy, in 1965, had been for a film soundtrack.

Which action star plays a hockey bruiser sentenced to fairy duty by Andrews's character in Tooth Fairy (2010)?

Dwayne Johnson. Andrews played Lily, the brisk head of the tooth fairies, who punishes his dream-crushing hockey player with two weeks of collecting teeth.

In which 1979 comedy did Andrews play the girlfriend of Dudley Moore's lovestruck songwriter?

10. The comedy, in which he chases Bo Derek to Mexico, was one of the biggest hits of 1979, and after it audiences began to accept Andrews in a wider range of roles.

Which 2007 Disney fairy-tale comedy did Andrews narrate?

Enchanted. Its in-jokes reach the casting: the actresses who voiced Disney's Belle and Ariel both turn up in live-action cameos.

At which London venue did Andrews stage her 2010 comeback concert, The Gift of Music?

The O2 Arena. Some 20,000 fans roared their welcome before she had sung a note, but with her voice reduced to what she called speak-singing, one reviewer wrote that somebody should have stopped her.