Julie Andrews Breaks Down Her Career, from 'The Sound of Music' to 'The Princess Diaries'

I'm often asked what advice I would give

to young people who are just starting

in this best of all possible worlds.

If you love what you do, and you really,

really want to do it, then embrace it with all your heart

because some great good fortune is going to pass

under your nose when you least expect it.

Hello, I'm Julie Andrews

and this is a timeline of my career.

My career began at quite a young age, really.

My school closed because of the war, World War II,

and my mother and my stepfather for some crazy reason

decided to give me some singing lessons.

My step dad was in vaudeville and my mother was a pianist

and she played the piano for him and they had an act,

toured all over England.

To their surprise, they found out that I had

a kind of freaky adult larynx

and could sing all kinds of coloratura songs

and it wasn't long before I became part of their act.

At the age of about 10, I began climbing on a box

to sing beside them on stage and then at 12,

I had my first sort of main break in London.

And that night was very successful for me

because I don't think the press had ever heard

such a freaky four octave voice in such a young kid before.

But it was the beginning of all the rest, really.

I was in a London production of a Cinderella.

Also playing at the same time in London

was a very popular show called The Boyfriend.

And some American producers came over to London

and a great friend of mine said, Why don't you look in

at the girl in Cinderella?

So they came to see the show, came backstage and met,

and asked if I'd like to go to Broadway in America,

which was one of the great pieces of serendipity in my life.

Because after I had been in The Boyfriend for a year,

I was asked by Lerner and Loewe,

who wrote the wondrous play, My Fair Lady,

if I would be interested in playing Eliza Doolittle.

And then I guess my career took off from there.

♪ All I want room somewhere ♪

♪ Far away from the cold night air ♪

♪ With one enormous chair ♪

♪ Now wouldn't it be lovely ♪

I had a lot of challenges in terms of creating Eliza.

First of all, I really didn't have a Cockney accent.

I didn't know how to find it.

And I'd never really done a play before.

I'd done my act in variety, in vaudeville, in musical

but never a really long, wonderful play.

And so I was completely out of my depth.

And then it was just a question, really,

of putting my head down and learning day after day

after day my craft.

It really was the greatest learning experience on stage

that I could ever have had.

I was in the show for about three and a half years

and that's a very long time

to play eight performances a week.

It does teach somebody how to, I mean,

if your leading man has a cold,

if the audience is coughing and sneezing,

if it's raining outside, any number of things could happen

and you really learn how to preserve your voice,

how to deliver lines, how to play comedy.

I mean, it was a tremendous experience for me.

♪ Someone's head resting on my knee ♪

♪ Warm and tender as he can be ♪

Very well, hold this for me.

As I expected.

Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way.

When I was fortunate enough to be asked to make the film

of Mary Poppins, again, it was a brand new thing

in my life that I'd never done before.

It was for Walt Disney, of course, and the songs

in Mary Poppins had a kind of vaudeville quality to them.

And I think it's what attracted me to the role

because all that kind of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

and Jolly Holiday music was very much

like the kind of things that you hear in English vaudeville.

♪ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ♪

♪ Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious ♪

♪ If you say it loud enough, you'll always sound precocious ♪

♪ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ♪

I felt a little bit more at home with the music I always did

because basically all my life I've been a singer, really.

And so with the kindness of people like the Disney team,

little by little by little, I learned the craft

of making a film.

The wonder of that all was that Mr. Disney not only asked me

to do the film, but he asked my then-husband,

Tony Walton, to design Cherry Tree Lane

and all the interiors of all the homes in the movie

plus the costumes for everybody.

Tony was hugely talented and creating my costumes,

he would discuss them with me and he said,

You know, you're very prim and proper on the outside,

but I think Mary Poppins has a kind of secret life, maybe,

and I'm gonna give her, when you open your coat

or when you turn and dance, you'll see marvelously-colored

petticoats and wonderful linings of your clothes.

And he said, Because I think

that's what gives her pleasure.

Very formal on the outside and a little bit wicked

on the inside, so to speak.

And it completely gave me a clue as to her character.

Big, big help for me.

♪ Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down ♪

♪ In a most delightful way ♪

♪ The hills are alive with the sound of music ♪

Everybody knows that The Sound of Music

was based on the Broadway musical.

When it came time to do the movie, I think most of us felt

that the piece could be quite saccharine

if we were not careful.

I know our director, Robert Wise, felt that way,

I know that wonderful Christopher Plummer felt that way,

and I certainly did also.

So there were some conversations before we began filming

how best to get rid of the really sugary parts of the film.

It's mostly because with that beautiful scenery

and seven children and that glorious music,

if you weren't careful, it could be very, very sugary.

It was really thanks to Chris Plummer

who gave the film its glue.

He was the firm, stern father of the children

and the antagonist that I had to work with.

Chris was such a wonderful actor.

We became great friends and really,

until he passed away fairly recently,

we saw each other a lot, we knew each other.

He stayed a friend and it was very pleasant.

♪ When you sing, you begin with do, re, mi ♪

♪ Do, re mi ♪

♪ Do, re, mi ♪

[Jimmy] I have you.

You're home.

Oh, oh, thank you, thank you!

I was very proud to make a wonderful film called Hawaii.

And that was directed by a wonderful director

called George Roy Hill.

And in very short order, he was asked to direct a film

called Thoroughly Modern Millie,

which was a 20s flapper comedy, full of sweetness.

I had a ball making that film.

First of all, the costumes were delicious

and it was with wonderful Mary Tyler Moore.

My friendship with Mary was such

that long after we'd finished the film,

I was called Millie and she was called Miss Dorothy.

And so I would meet her long after the film was over,

we'd see each other across a grocery shop

or something like that and I'd go, Hey, Miss Dorothy!

Millie! And we'd rush to meet and catch up on news.

It was a very nice relationship. We really bonded.

You have nice eyes.

You should catch 'em by candlelight.

[Millie snorts]

Have dinner with me?

♪ Oh baby won't you play me ♪

♪ Le Jazz Hot maybe ♪

♪ And don't ever let it end ♪

My first husband and I had sadly divorced

and it was painful, as they always are.

But, eventually I met Blake.

He was very charismatic, very attractive man,

and a fabulous film director.

We did seven films together and one of the,

probably one of the most important ones was Victor/Victoria.

And he came home one day having seen a German film

called Victor und Victoria and it was the basic theme

of the film that we subsequently made,

but it didn't have any of the depth of story,

it didn't have the love story in it,

it didn't have the homosexuality in it.

It was just a early 1930s black and white movie.

And Blake began to think about it

and he said to me, I've got,

there's a wonderful role for you.

And I kept thinking, I don't think anybody's gonna believe

that I could be a guy.

And I asked him about it and he said,

Julie, don't worry about it.

I've built it into the film.

The audience within the film believes wholeheartedly

that you are a guy and therefore the audience

watching the movie in the cinema

will go along with that story.

It was fascinating to play that role.

It stood me on my head.

Was I a woman becoming a man

or was I a woman playing a man

but thinking like a woman or was I trying to be a man only

but then got stuck with thinking like a woman?

It was crazy.

It was like patting your stomach

and rubbing your head, that kind of thing.

It was great fun to do.

And it was the third film I ever made

with that wonderful actor, James Garner.

He's not only a great actor, he's a great reactor.

If you watch Victor/Victoria,

you'll know exactly what I mean.

His reactions to my character were priceless

and it was easy to work with him by then

because we were such good friends.

Well, I just find it hard to believe that you're a man.

Because you found me attractive as a woman?

Yes, as a matter of fact.

Doctor, I want you to make it stop.

I mean, my hands, something else could go any day now.

I don't know when.

Somewhere in the midst of other films,

a screenplay came across my desk, so to speak.

It was loosely based on Jacqueline du Pre,

who was a phenomenal cellist but she got multiple sclerosis

and couldn't eventually play.

And that's the basis of the film.

In this case, I played a violinist.

It was one of the hardest films,

in terms of getting into the role, that I've ever done.

I've had to do longer films and more exhausting films,

but this one was deeply sad.

And I was confined to a wheelchair most of the time.

I did a lot of research and went to the clinics

where a lot of patients would go

for counseling or to get together.

They were very, very helpful to me

and it's such a terrible illness.

Unfortunately, I think, if I may be so brave,

I think the studio felt it wasn't

the biggest blockbuster they'd ever made

and they released it, of all days, on Christmas day.

And I think it closed on the day

after Christmas Day. [laughs]

But I'm still very proud that I did it.

You married me because I was famous.

And who were you?

You're nothing but a lazy, spoiled man.

If I am, you made me that way.

Don't--

Amelia, I'm so glad you could come.

[Amelia] Hi, you've got a great place.

Thank you.

Well, let me look at you.

You look so

young.

Later in my career, I made two films,

Princess Diaries 1 and Princess Diaries 2

and this lovely young, talented actress starred

in both of them, Anne Hathaway.

It was clear from the very first day of shooting

that she was gonna be a star.

She was incredibly talented, her instincts were so true,

she was very, very beautiful, and just a lovely human being.

And it was great fun to watch her growing and learning

and I kind of think that I probably

was a bit of a mum to her, too.

And we're great friends.

I have an announcement to make.

My granddaughter--

[Amelia clears throat]

She's here! I see.

She's---

What?

Mom, who is this sweaty guy? He's stinking up the house.

I thought you were cooking cabbage.

He's my new guru.

[Minion scoffs]

A lot of people ask me what it is like to do voice acting.

Not to be seen on a film, but to just do a voice.

I have to tell you, it's an extremely different technique,

nothing like making a movie.

One goes into a studio and offers up every kind of reading

of a line that you could possibly imagine.

And finally, the director of the film

takes the readings that he likes the best

and that's what ends up in his movie.

You literally discover it as you go along

and you are sort of putty in the director's hands.

The first one I did was when I was about 15 years old

and I think it was called The Singing Princess.

And all I did was dub a Czechoslovakian animated movie

and I never thought about it until more recently,

when a sort of spade of them have come along.

I'm kind of happy to be doing them,

like Bridgerton, like Gru's mum in Despicable Me

and The Minions.

It's very pleasant because you don't have

to go into the studio,

you can just come in your dressing gown if you want.

But mostly, you don't have to do hair and makeup,

you just have to give a voice.

In Despicable Me, the company said,

You name her. What's she gonna be called?

And she's such a terrible woman and so full of herself,

she thinks she's the best thing since God knows what.

So I thought she would think of herself

as a kind of a Marlene Dietrich.

That's her image of herself.

She's far from that, but I thought she should

be called Marlene, so she is.

She's maybe the worst mother you could possibly encounter.

She's terrible to Gru, her son.

She's the reason he becomes such a despicable human being.

It isn't poor Gru's fault, it's Mum's fault.

Some marvelous surprise will come your way,

some offer, some magic will happen.

But be ready, do your homework.

That's usually the advice that I give.

Because when you're asked to do something as miraculous

as some of the things that I've been asked to do,

you'd better be ready and I think, to a certain extent,

I did a lot of homework and it stood me

in great, good stead.