'The Sound of Music' star turns 88: Look back at her life in pictures
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In honor of Julie Andrews’ 88th birthday on Oct. 1, 2022, Wonderwall.com is taking a look back at the iconic star’s life and career in photos. Keep reading to relive her biggest moments caught on camera…
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In this 1947 photo, an 11-year-old Julie Andrews is seen posing for the camera to promote her debut in London’s West End production of “Starlight Roof.” The young actress and singer, who was born on Oct. 1, 1935, in Surrey, England, was touring the country with her mother and stepfather, both Vaudeville performers who, after noticing their daughter’s impressive vocal talent, began bringing her to auditions at an early age.
MORE: The best movie musicals of all time
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In this 1954 newspaper photo, 19-year-old Julie Andrews waves goodbye to her friends and family as she leaves London by train for Cleethorpes, England. The actress had just wrapped up her Broadway debut in America in “The Boy Friend,” for which she earned critical acclaim.
MORE: Stars who went from Broadway to the big screen
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Following her success with “The Boy Friend,” Julie Andrews made a return to Broadway for the 1956 production of “My Fair Lady.” In this photo, she’s seen recording a song for the musical with co-star Rex Harrison. In 1964, Julie lost the same role to actress Audrey Hepburn when producers were casting the movie version.
MORE: “The Sound of Music” cast: Where are they now?
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In this 1958 photo, Julie Andrews is seen drinking a glass of wine while waiting at an airport in London. The actress and singer had a lot to celebrate that year. Not only was she starring in the West End production of “My Fair Lady” (in the same role she played on Broadway), but she’d also released her musical album “Julie Andrews Sings.”
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On May 12, 1959, Julie Andrews married her childhood sweetheart, Tony Walton, in a small ceremony in Weybridge, England. The couple met when Julie was in the school play “Humpty Dumpty.” Tony, who later became a set designer, said he “promptly fell in love with her” at first sight.
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In this 1960 photo, Julie Andrews is seen on stage in the Broadway production of “Camelot.” Her role as Guenevere earned her a Tony Award nomination for best lead actress in a musical.
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On Nov. 22, 1962, Julie Andrews and husband Tony Walton welcomed daughter Emma to the world. The family is seen here in London in 1963.
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In 1964, Julie Andrews made her big-screen debut as the title character in “Mary Poppins.” The musical-comedy, which co-starred Dick Van Dyke and young Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice, marked Julie’s entrance into Hollywood as a bona fide film star. Disney, which produced the movie, had actually cast Julie back in 1962 but due to her pregnancy, waited to begin filming.
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On April 5, 1965, Julie Andrews won the Oscar for best actress for her performance in “Mary Poppins.” That same year, she won a Golden Globe in the same category, which only further ignited her sizzling career in Hollywood.
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In 1965, Julie Andrews landed the iconic role of Maria Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.” The musical, about a woman who leaves a convent to become a nanny, capitalized on Julie’s newfound Oscar and Golden Globe fame and became the third-highest grossing film of the year. Julie earned her second Oscar nod for the movie and won her second Golden Globe in 1966.
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Julie Andrews co-starred with Mary Tyler Moore in the 1967 Oscar-winning musical-comedy “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” But not everything was going perfectly for the singer-actress, who divorced first husband Tony Walton that same year.
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Julie Andrews is seen in this 1968 photo with filmmaker Blake Edwards, whom she married in 1969. According to the actress, they began dating after connecting in the parking lot of a therapist’s office — she was headed in as Blake was headed out. They’d actually met a decade earlier but were like “ships passing in the night” at the time, she’s said.
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Julie Andrews is seen here with stepdaughter Jenny Edwards in Los Angeles in 1971. Julie was proudly displaying her new children’s novel, “Mandy,” a book about a 10-year-old orphan who sneaks over the orphanage wall to explore the world beyond and finds a secluded, abandoned cottage that she slowly turns into a place to call home.
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In 1972 — following two failed films in four years — Julie Andrews made a career move to the small screen, on which she hosted her own variety-sketch series, “The Julie Andrews Hour,” which included her own singing performances. The show was based on a previous special she’d hosted in 1965, as well as a 1971 special she’d co-starred in with comedian friend Carol Burnett. Though Julie’s show was canceled after two seasons, it earned an Emmy nomination for outstanding new series.
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In 1974, Julie Andrews starred in her third consecutive critically panned film, “The Tamarind Seed.” The movie, which was written and directed by her husband, Blake Edwards, cast Julie in the role of a British spy, which fans and critics had a hard time accepting based on her earlier, more wholesome roles. The same year, Julie and Blake decided it was time to expand their family, which already included Blake’s two kids from a previous marriage, Geoffrey and Jennifer, and Julie’s daughter from her first marriage, Emma. The couple adopted 2-month-old daughter Amy from a Saigon orphanage in 1974. The following year, they also adopted 5-month-old daughter Joanna. The girls left their native country shortly before Saigon fell at the end of the Vietnam War.
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Julie Andrews got some one-on-one time with Queen Elizabeth II during the monarch’s Silver Jubilee in London on Nov. 22, 1977. The singer-actress, who performed that evening with comedian Bob Hope, actually met Her Majesty nearly 30 years earlier when she was hired at age 13 to sing the British national anthem for Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, in 1948.
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Julie Andrews received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Oct. 5, 1979.
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After taking a few years off from filmmaking to focus on raising her family, Julie Andrews made a return to the big screen with a starring role in 1980’s “Little Miss Marker.” Co-starring Walter Matthau, the film was a remake of the 1934 movie of the same name that had starred a young Shirley Temple.
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In 1982, Julie Andrews starred as Victoria Grant in the musical-comedy “Victor Victoria.” The film earned her an Oscar nomination and won her another Golden Globe. It also re-established her as one of the most talented performers of the decade.
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When it was husband Blake Edwards’ turn to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 3, 1991, Julie Andrews was front and center to honor her beloved partner, the director of famed projects including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “10” and the “Pink Panther” films. The couple were joined by kids Amy (left) and Jennifer (right).
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In this April 1991 picture, Julie Andrews is seen with husband Blake Edwards at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Her film career was slowing down by the early ’90s, but she wasn’t completely out of the limelight. Along with starring in “A Fine Romance” in 1992, Julie returned to the theater in an off-Broadway production of “Putting it Together” in 1993.
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In 1995, Julie Andrews returned to Broadway in the stage production of “Victor/Victoria” in the same role she’d played on the big screen in 1982. Not only did she revive her character, Victoria Grant, for the theater, but she also reprised the role in the 1995 TV movie. Interestingly, she earned a Tony Award nomination for her Broadway performance the following year but unceremoniously withdrew her name from consideration after learning that none of her fellow cast or crew members scored nominations. Of her decision to decline the nomination, Julie reportedly said, “I have searched my conscience and my heart and find that I cannot accept this nomination and prefer instead to stand with the egregiously overlooked.”
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Julie Andrews attended the opening night of “The Lion King” on Broadway on Nov. 17, 1997. Sadly, that same year, her own musical talent was stolen from her after she underwent vocal-cord surgery to remove non-cancerous nodules. When she awoke from the operation, the nodules were gone — but so was her ability to sing. The acclaimed singer and actress took her surgeon to court in a medical malpractice case that they eventually settled in September 2000.
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In January 2000, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed a new honorary title — Dame — upon Julie Andrews. The singer-actress posed at the ceremony — during which Elizabeth Taylor and Sean Connery were also honored — with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton.
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Julie Andrews returned to the big screen in 2001 alongside Anne Hathaway to star in the heartwarming film “The Princess Diaries,” a film about an average American teenage girl, Mia Thermopolis, who finds out she’s heir to the throne of Genovia. Based on a series of young adult novels by Meg Cabot, the screenplay made a rather surprising change to the original material. The film’s producers revealed that in order to give Julie a larger part (she’s Mia’s grandmother) with more lines, they had to kill off a major character in the book: Mia’s dad.
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The same year Julie Andrews starred in “The Princess Diaries,” she also joined the cast of “Shrek 2.” Julie — seen here on May 8, 2004, at the Los Angeles premiere of the animated adventure — was the vocal talent behind Princess Fiona’s mother, aptly named Queen.
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A year after publishing “Home: A Memoir of My Early Years,” Julie Andrews returned with a new children’s book co-authored with daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, “Julie Andrews’s Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies,” which went on to become a New York Times bestseller. On Oct. 5, 2009, the Oscar winner presented her book to audiences at the Paley Center for Media in New York during “An Evening with Julie Andrews.”
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On Sept. 30, 2010, Julie Andrews and her husband of 41 years, Blake Edwards, celebrated his lifetime of work in the movie industry at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Evening with Blake Edwards event. Sadly, it would be the last Hollywood event Blake attended, as he passed away less than three months later, on Dec. 15, due to complications from pneumonia.
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After her husband’s death in 2010, Julie Andrews took some time away from the spotlight to reflect and mourn. In 2015, she told “Good Morning Britain” that she was “still dealing with it” and that, at times, the realization of his passing “socks” her in the gut. Two years later, she made a graceful return to the big and small screens. Along with reprising her voice role as Gru’s mom in “Despicable Me 3,” she also launched her own Netflix original series, “Julie’s Greenroom,” an educational show aimed at preschool children on which she portrayed a performing arts instructor for a group of excited and eager-to-learn puppet-children. The series lasted just one season.
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Julie Andrews received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement in acting at Italy’s Venice Film Festival on Sept. 2, 2019.
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Julie Andrews and daughter Emma Walton Hamilton co-authored Julie’s second memoir, “Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years,” which came out on Oct. 15, 2019. The book picks up Julie’s incredible story with her arrival in Hollywood and her rise to fame in her earliest films and delves into her experiences as a new mother and stepmother, her romance with Blake Edwards and more.
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Julie Andrews was honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award on June 9, 2022, at a ceremony attended by close friend Carol Burnett, “Despicable Me” co-star Steve Carell and five cast members from her iconic film “The Sound of Music” — Nicholas Hammond, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner and Kym Karath. Of her legacy, the Julie told the Associated Press ahead of the event, “I just hope I gave a little pleasure. That’s the only legacy I would be happy about. That’s what it’s all about. It’s the giving. And I just hope that, you know, they had a good time.”
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Julie Andrews stopped by “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on June 24, 2022, to promote her latest project, “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” in which she reprised her voice role playing Gru’s mom five years after the release of “Despicable Me 3.” Julie’s also lent her famous pipes to the hit Netflix series “Bridgerton” — which is based on bestselling novelist Julia Quinn’s book series set in Britain’s Regency era — on which she’s voiced the narrator, Lady Whistledown, since late 2020.
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