Julie Andrews's - Succeed

Dame Julia Elizabeth "Julie" Andrews,(born 1 October 1935) is an English film and stage actress, a singer, an author, a theatre director, and a dancer.

Andrews, a child actress and singer, appeared on the West End in 1948, and made her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend (1954). In 1957, she appeared on television with the title role in the musical, Cinderella, which was seen by over 100 million viewers. She rose to prominence starring in musicals such as My Fair Lady (1957) and Camelot (1960).

Andrews made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins (1964) with her performance in the title role, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She starred in The Sound of Music (1965), playing Maria, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Adjusted for inflation, The Sound of Music is the third-highest grossing film of all time.

Between 1964 and 1986, Andrews starred in, The Americanization of Emily (1964), Hawaii (1966), Torn Curtain (1966), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), Star! (1968), Darling Lili (1970), The Tamarind Seed (1974), 10 (1979), Victor Victoria (1982), That's Life! (1986), and Duet for One (1986).

In 2000, Andrews was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the performing arts. In 2002, she was ranked #59 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. In 2003, she revisited her first Broadway success, this time as a stage director, with a revival of The Boy Friend at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York.

From 2001 to 2004, Andrews starred in The Princess Diaries (2001), The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004). From 2004 to 2010, she lent her voice to the Shrek animated films (2004–2010), and Despicable Me (2010).

Andrews has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, 5 Golden Globes, 3 Grammys, 2 Emmys, the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honors Award, and the Disney Legend Award. She is an author of children's books, and has published her autobiography, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years (2008).

Julia Elizabeth Wells was born on 1 October 1935, in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Her mother, Barbara Ward Wells (née Morris) (1910-1984) was born 1910 in Chertsey and married Edward Charles "Ted" Wells (1908-1990), a teacher of metalwork and woodwork in 1932. However, Andrews was conceived as a result of an affair her mother had with an unnamed family friend. Andrews discovered her true parentage from her mother in 1950, although it was not publicly disclosed until her 2008 autobiography.

With the outbreak of World War II, Barbara and Ted Wells went their separate ways and were soon divorced. They both remarried: Barbara to Ted Andrews, in 1943, and Ted Wells, in 1944, to a former hairstylist working a lathe at a war work factory that employed them both in Hinchley Wood, Surrey. Ted Wells assisted with evacuating children to Surrey during the Blitz, while Barbara joined Ted Andrews in entertaining the troops through the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA).

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, who, the elder Wells thought, would be better able to provide for his talented daughter's artistic training. According to her 2008 autobiography Home, while Julie had been used to calling Ted Andrews "Uncle Ted", her mother suggested it would be more appropriate to refer to her stepfather as "Pop", while her father remained "Dad" or "Daddy" to her. Julie disliked this change.

The Andrews family was "very poor and we lived in a bad slum area of London," Andrews recalled, adding, "That was a very black period in my life." According to Andrews, her stepfather was violent and an alcoholic. Ted Andrews twice, while drunk, tried to get into bed with his stepdaughter, resulting in Andrews fitting a lock on her door. But, as the stage career of Ted and Barbara Andrews improved, they were able to afford to move to better surroundings, first to Beckenham and then, as the war ended, back to the Andrews' home town of Hersham. The Andrews family took up residence at the Old Meuse, in West Grove, Hersham, a house (now demolished) where Andrews' maternal grandmother had served as a maid.

Andrews' stepfather sponsored lessons for her, first at the Cone-Ripman School (now known commonly as ArtsEd), an independent arts educational school in London, then with concert soprano and voice instructor Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen. "She had an enormous influence on me", Andrews said of Stiles-Allen, adding, "She was my third mother – I've got more mothers and fathers than anyone in the world." In her memoir Julie Andrews – My Star Pupil, Stiles-Allen records: "The range, accuracy and tone of Julie's voice amazed me ... she had possessed the rare gift of absolute pitch" (though Andrews herself refutes this in her 2008 autobiography Home). According to Andrews: "Madame was sure that I could do Mozart and Rossini, but, to be honest, I never was". Of her own voice, she says "I had a very pure, white, thin voice, a four-octave range – dogs would come for miles around." After Cone-Ripman School, Andrews continued her academic education at the nearby Woodbrook School, a local state school in Beckenham.

Beginning in 1945, and for the next two years, Julie Andrews performed spontaneously and unbilled on stage with her parents. "Then came the day when I was told I must go to bed in the afternoon because I was going to be allowed to sing with Mummy and Pop in the evening," Andrews explained. She would stand on a beer crate to sing into the microphone, sometimes a solo or as a duet with her stepfather, while her mother played piano. "It must have been ghastly, but it seemed to go down all right."

Julie Andrews gained her big break when her stepfather introduced her to Val Parnell, whose Moss Empires controlled prominent venues in London. Andrews made her professional solo debut at the London Hippodrome singing the difficult aria "Je suis Titania" from Mignon as part of a musical revue called "Starlight Roof" on 22 October 1947. She played the Hippodrome for one year.  Andrews recalled "Starlight Roof" saying, "There was this wonderful American person and comedian, Wally Boag, who made balloon animals. He would say, 'Is there any little girl or boy in the audience who would like one of these?' And I would rush up onstage and say, 'I'd like one, please.' And then he would chat to me and I'd tell him I sang... I was fortunate in that I absolutely stopped the show cold. I mean, the audience went crazy."

On 1 November 1948, Julie Andrews (aged 13) became the youngest solo performer ever to be seen in a Royal Command Variety Performance, at the London Palladium, where she performed along with Danny Kaye, the Nicholas Brothers and the comedy team George and Bert Bernard for members of King George VI's family.

Julie Andrews followed her parents into radio and television.  She performed in musical interludes of the BBC Light Programme comedy show Up the Pole and later Educating Archie, of which she was a cast member from 1950 to 1952.  She reportedly made her television début on the BBC programme RadiOlympia Showtime on 8 October 1949.

Andrews appeared on West End theatre at the London Casino, where she played one year each as Princess Badroulbadour in Aladdin and the egg in Humpty Dumpty. She also appeared on provincial stages in Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood, as well as starring as the lead role in Cinderella.

On 30 September 1954 on the eve of her 19th birthday, Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut portraying Polly Browne in the already highly successful London musical The Boy Friend. To the critics, Andrews was the stand-out performer in the show. Near the end of her Boy Friend contract, Andrews was asked to audition for My Fair Lady on Broadway and got the part. In November 1955 Andrews was signed to appear with Bing Crosby in what is regarded as the first made-for-television film, High Tor.

Andrews auditioned for a part in the Richard Rodgers musical Pipe Dream. Although Rodgers wanted her for Pipe Dream, he advised her to take the part in the Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner musical My Fair Lady if it were offered to her. In 1956, she appeared on stage in My Fair Lady as Eliza Doolittle to Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins. Rodgers was so impressed with Andrews' talent that concurrent with her run in My Fair Lady, she was featured in the Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical, Cinderella. Cinderella was broadcast live on CBS on 31 March 1957 under the musical direction of Alfredo Antonini and attracted an estimated 107 million viewers. The show was broadcast in colour from CBS Studio 72, at 2248 Broadway in New York City. Only a black-and-white kinescope remains, which has been released on DVD. Andrews was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance. Between 1958 and 1962, Andrews appeared on such specials as CBS-TV's The Fabulous Fifties and NBC-TV's The Broadway of Lerner & Loewe. In addition to guest starring on The Ed Sullivan Show (15 July 1956), she also appeared on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, What's My Line?, The Jack Benny Program, The Bell Telephone Hour and The Garry Moore Show. In June 1962, Andrews co-starred in Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, a CBS special with Carol Burnett.

In 1960, Lerner and Loewe again cast her in a period musical as Queen Guinevere in Camelot, with Richard Burton and newcomer Robert Goulet. However film studio head Jack L. Warner decided Andrews lacked sufficient name recognition for her casting in the film version of My Fair Lady; Eliza was played by the established film actress Audrey Hepburn instead. As Warner later recalled, the decision was easy, "In my business I have to know who brings people and their money to a cinema box office. Audrey Hepburn had never made a financial flop."

Andrews has been married twice, first to set designer Tony Walton from 1959 until 1967, then to director Blake Edwards from 1969 until his death in 2010.

Andrews married Walton on 10 May 1959 in Weybridge, Surrey. They had first met in 1948 when Andrews was appearing at the London Casino in the show Humpty Dumpty. Andrews and Walton headed back to Britain in September 1962 to await the birth of daughter Emma Katherine Walton, who was born in London two months later.

Andrews married Edwards in 1969; his children from a previous marriage, Jennifer and Geoffrey, were 3 and 5 years older than Emma, Andrews' daughter with Tony Walton. In the 1970s, Edwards and Andrews adopted two daughters; Amy in 1974 and Joanna in 1975. Andrews is a grandmother to nine and great-grandmother to three.