Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews is an English actress, singer and author.

In January 2007, Julie Andrews was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild's awards, and stated that her goals including continuing to direct for the stage, and possibly to produce her own Broadway musical.

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years - Julie Andrews

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

by Julie Andrews

Amazon Price: $17.79 (as of 10/07/2008)
List Price: $26.95

Syphilis, alcoholism, infidelity, and indeterminate parentage may seem improbable touchstones in the back story of one who didn't so much portray as embody the blithe Maria in The Sound of Music. But as this memoir of her formative years makes clear, there is more gravitas to Andrews than meets the eye. From her childhood in rural England and initial forays into British theater, to her first massive successes on Broadway and in the West End--notably as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady--Home puts her celebrated career in context. While arguably offering more detail about the Andrews family than necessary, it nevertheless dishes wonderful anecdotes about legends and Andrews contemporaries like Noël Coward, Rex Harrison, Robert Goulet, Richard Burton, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, in prose as crisp and immaculate as the author herself. It also offers a revealing look into the intricate, exhaustive craft of performing--skills often taken for granted in tabloid times. Since the book ends just as Andrews is about to launch into the celluloid stratosphere, can Volume II be far behind? After Home, it would be most welcome. -- Kim Hughes

Release Date: 04/01/2008

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Julie Andrews Biography

In the 2000 New Year's Honours, despite Julie Andrews's long exile in the United States and Switzerland, she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE). She also appears in the 2002 List of "100 Greatest Britons" sponsored by the BBC and chosen by the public. In 2001, Andrews received Kennedy Center Honors. The same year, she reunited with Sound of Music costar Christopher Plummer in a live television performance of On Golden Pond (an adaptation of the 1979 play).

In 2001, Andrews appeared in The Princess Diaries, her first Disney film since 1964's Mary Poppins. The film, in which she starred as Queen Clarisse Marie Renaldi opposite Anne Hathaway, was a box office success and was followed by a sequel, The Princess Diaries 2 (2004). In The Princess Diaries 2, Andrews sang on film for the first time since her throat surgery. The song, "Your Crowning Glory", was set in a limited range of an octave to accommodate Andrews' recovering voice. The film's music supervisor Dawn Soler recalled that Andrews "nailed the song on the first take. I looked around and I saw grips with tears in their eyes."

Andrews continued her association with Disney when she appeared as Nanny in two 2003 made-for-television movies based on the Eloise books, a series of children's books by Kay Thompson about a child who lives in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Eloise at the Plaza premiered in April 2003, and Eloise at Christmastime was broadcast in November 2003. The same year, Andrews made her debut as a theatre director, directing a revival of The Boy Friend, the musical in which she made her Broadway debut, at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York. Her production, which featured costume and scenic design by her former husband Tony Walton, was remounted at the Goodspeed Opera House in 2005 and went on a national tour in 2006.

From 2005 to 2006, Andrews served as the Official Ambassador for Disneyland's 18 month-long, 50th anniversary celebration, the "Happiest Homecoming on Earth", travelling to promote the celebration and recording narration or appearing at several events at the park.

In 2004, Andrews performed the voice of Queen Lillian in the animated blockbuster Shrek 2 (2004), reprising the role for its sequel, Shrek the Third (2007). Later in 2007, she narrated Enchanted, a live-action Disney musical comedy that paid homage to classic Disney films such as Mary Poppins.

In January 2007, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild's awards, and stated that her goals including continuing to direct for the stage, and possibly to produce her own Broadway musical. She published Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, which she characterized as "part one" of her autobiography, on April 1, 2008. Home chronicles her early years in England's music hall circuit and ends in 1962 with her winning the role of Mary Poppins. For a Walt Disney video release she again portrayed Mary Poppins and narrated the story of The Cat That Looked at a King in 2004.

Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (born Julia Elizabeth WellsJulie Andrews. Reel Classics. on October 1 1935Dame Julie: The sound of music. 31 December 1999. Retrieved 29 January 2007.) is an award-winning English actress, singer, author and icon. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours. Andrews was a former English child actress and singer who first came to Broadway in 1954 with The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in other musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, and in musical films such as Mary Poppins (1964) The Sound of Music (1965) and Victor/Victoria (1981).

Andrews had a major revival of her film career in the 2000s, in family films such as, The Princess Diaries (2001), its sequel Category: The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement - (2004), and the Shrek animated films (2004-2007). In 2005 Andrews revisited her first Broadway success, this time as a stage director, with a revival of The Boy Friend at a theatre in Connecticut.

Andrews is also an author of children's books, and in 2008 she published an autobiography, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.

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Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography - Richard Stirling

"Julie Andrews is, quite simply, a phenomenon. She has probably brought more joy to more people than any other star of her generation."--- Richard Attenborough

Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography

by Richard Stirling

Amazon Price: $18.45 (as of 10/07/2008)

London-based stage/TV/film actor Stirling brings up the house lights to detail the entire life of the performer he has known since 1986. Having previously written about Andrews for the Evening Standard and other publications, he highlights recollections of her associates, in addition to his extensive archival research, plowing through some six decades of reportage and interviews in magazines, newspapers and books. Stirling grabs the reader's attention on the opening pages with a description of Andrews's 1997 Mount Sinai Hospital throat surgery, a normal operation that went tragically wrong: "Her principal trademark, the voice of mountain spring purity, was gone, as astonishingly as it had first appeared." Beginning with her childhood in London during the Blitz and youthful voice lessons, Stirling traces her career from post-WWII performances on BBC Radio and the London stage to her 1954 arrival in America with The Boy Friend. After acclaim for My Fair Lady and Camelot came the caravan of TV and movie roles that continue until the present day with voice work in the Shrek series and last year's Enchanted. The book successfully documents and details the professional and personal peaks of her life. With Andrews's memoir, Home, to be published in April, devoted fans are sure to turn to both.