Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews

Dame Julie Andrews DBE is an English actress, singer, dancer, and author. She rose to prominence starring in Broadway musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot. Andrews has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, five Golden Globes, three Grammys, two Emmys, the AFI Life Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award. In 2000 she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the performing arts.

About Julie Andrews in brief

Summary Julie AndrewsDame Julie Andrews DBE is an English actress, singer, dancer, and author. She rose to prominence starring in Broadway musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot. Andrews has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, five Golden Globes, three Grammys, two Emmys, the AFI Life Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award. From 2004 to 2018 she lent her voice to the Shrek and Despicable Me animated films and Aquaman. Beginning in 2020, Andrews voiced the narrator Lady Whistledown in the Netflix series Bridgerton. In 2000, Andrews was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the performing arts. Andrews was born on 1 October 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Her mother, Barbara Ward Wells, married Edward Charles \”Ted\” Wells, a teacher of metalwork and woodwork, in 1932. She was conceived as a result of an affair her mother had with a family friend. Andrews discovered her true parentage from her mother in 1950, although it was not publicly disclosed until her 2008 autobiography. In 2002 she was ranked #59 in the BBC’s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Andrews lived briefly with Ted Wells and her brother John in Surrey. In 1940, Ted Wells sent young Julia to live with her mother and stepfather, whom he thought would be better able to provide for his talented daughter’s artistic training. According to Julie Andrews’ 2008 autobiography, while Julie was calling Ted ‘Pop’, her mother suggested it would be more appropriate to refer to her stepfather as ‘Uncle Ted’ or ‘Dad’ The elder Ted Wells tried to get Julie into bed with his stepdaughter twice, resulting in a lock on the door.

As the stage career of Julie Andrews of the 1960s and 1970s ended, she moved to New York to pursue a career as a stage director. She has also worked hosting performance shows such as Great Performances and narrating documentaries such as the 2004 Emmy-winning series Broadway: The American Musical. She is also an author of children’s books and has published two autobiographies, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years and Home Work: a Memoir Of My Hollywood Years. In 2003 she revisited her first Broadway success, this time as astage director, with a revival of The Boy Friend. She starred in The Princess Diaries and its sequel as Queen Clarisse Renaldi and in the Despicables Me series as Gru’s mother Marlena. From 2001 to 2004 Andrews starred in the films The Princess diaries 2: Royal Engagement and The PrincessDiaries 2. She also appeared in The Shrek series as Queen Lillian, in the sequel to the first film, and in The princess Diaries 2, and The princess diaries sequel to The Princess and the Count of Montezuma. In 2010, she appeared in the TV series The Voice as the voice of Lady Whistleledown.