ACTRESS, SINGER, AND AUTHOR ENGLANDPerseverance is failing nineteen times and succeeding the twentieth.
—JULIE ANDREWS
Julie hung back, listening. She could hear her mother talking in the next room. She sounded quite upset. “But tomorrow is opening night!” she cried.
“I’m sorry, but Julie is just too young for the show,” the producer said. “She’s not fitting in.”
What he said made sense to Julie. She was just a kid, after all—only twelve years old. Starlight Roof was a sophisticated show for grown-ups. Plus, her number, “The Skaters’ Waltz,” was a silly kids’ song.
But her mother didn’t give up so easily. She was outraged. “You cannot do this to a young child! She’ll be heartbroken!”
The producer didn’t answer, but Julie could hear him walking toward the door.
“Wait!” her mother said. “We can make her part better.”
“What if she sings something more complicated? Perhaps the ‘Polonaise’ from Mignon.”
The producer laughed. “She can’t sing that! No twelve-year-old can sing the ‘Polonaise.’ ”
“Julie can.”
That made Julie smile. The song was one of the most complicated songs out there, a hundred times harder than “The Skaters’ Waltz.” She loved singing it, and she was thrilled when the producer agreed to her mother’s plan.
On opening night, Julie stepped onstage at her cue. The audience was surprised to see such a young girl singing in the show. When she opened her mouth, a strong, beautiful, soprano burst out. Julie’s voice skipped up and down the scale like she skipped up the stairs at home. It leapt octaves and shifted keys on a dime. At the cadenza, the most challenging part of the song, Julie held the high C note . . . and then she pushed her voice even higher—up to the high F. It was an impossibly high note. But not for Julie.
When she finished the crowd was silent. Was I not good enough? she worried. Then they erupted in applause. They rose to their feet, clapping and whistling for the young girl with the amazing voice. Their standing ovation went on and on, literally stopping the show.1
The next morning, reviews called Julie Andrews a “prodigy with pigtails.”2 Her rise to stardom was practically a sure thing after that. But it wasn’t always so.
Julie was born in Walton-on-Thames, a village in the south of England, to two very broke parents. Her father, Ted Wells, taught woodworking and metalworking; her mother, Barbara, played piano; and they shared a tiny house with Julie’s aunt, who taught dance lessons. Julie grew up surrounded by music but not money.
When Julie was around four years old, her mother began traveling for long periods of time, playing piano for a singer named Ted Andrews. Within a year, her mother abandoned her two children entirely and took off with her new beau. Julie adored her father and was heartbroken that her mother had left them. A few months after the start of World War II, her mother sent for six-year-old Julie to come live with her in London, but she did not send for Julie’s younger brother. Julie was very angry with her and didn’t want to leave her father and brother behind to live with her mother and the boyfriend she hated.
Julie’s early years in London were tough. It was “a very black period in my life,” she said, and added that they were “very poor . . . [we] lived in a bad slum area of London.”3 It was also during World War II, and London was a very dangerous place to live. The Germans bombed it constantly, and Julie spent a lot of time taking shelter in the subways, basements, and bomb shelters. Her mother married Ted Andrews and they were often gone, entertaining the troops. Julie spent many years feeling lonely and scared.
Julie really did have some amazing pipes. At age seven, a throat specialist declared she had an almost adult larynx. By 12, Julie could sing difficult songs that challenged most professional adult singers. She was a soprano with a four-octave range, meaning she could sing the notes for more than half the keys on a piano.
Julie’s stepfather began teaching her to sing when she was seven years old. Her parents were quite surprised to discover that their young daughter had an incredible voice. At age nine, they began paying for a professional singing coach. Julie’s voice coach said of her star pupil, “The range, accuracy, and tone of Julie’s voice amazed me. . . . All her life she had possessed the rare gift of absolute pitch.”4 Julie was just happy to be taking lessons from someone besides her detested stepfather.
By age nine, Julie was joining her mother and stepfather onstage, singing in their shows. She had to stand on a beer crate to reach the microphone. As the war drew to an end, the act began making more money, and the family was able to move to a larger, nicer home called Old Meuse. Many years before, Julie’s grandmother had worked at the same large house as a maid!
Julie got her first big break when she was twelve. Her stepfather got her an audition for a London musical revue called Starlight Roof, and Julie got the part. Julie remembered the crowd’s reaction to her vocal gymnastics: “I was fortunate in that I absolutely stopped the show cold; I mean, the audience went crazy.”5 Julie’s showbiz career was underway.
Julie was often moved to tears when she sang. “Mum would turn around and see me simply bawling my eyes out.” Her mother would scold her for being foolish, but her singing coach told her, “You must never be embarrassed when you are moved by music. It shows that you are a sensitive human being, capable of much feeling.”6
While Julie’s singing career was taking off, life at home was getting much worse. Her stepfather began to drink heavily and fight with her mother. In response, her mother drank more as well. The drinking and fighting hurt their act and the jobs dried up. With no work, they couldn’t afford the big house they’d purchased. By the time she was fifteen, Julie’s work supported her entire family and paid the mortgage on Old Meuse.
Her relationship with her stepfather hit rock bottom, too. Starting when Julie was nine, he tried to take advantage of her sexually by sneaking into her bed when her mother was gone. Each time, Julie managed to get away, but when she hit her teens, he got more persistent. Julie told her aunt, who installed a lock on her bedroom door to keep him out.
In 1954, when she was eighteen, Julie had her American debut in the Broadway musical The Boy Friend. Once again, Julie’s voice wowed critics and audiences, and her next role was even bigger: Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. The play was a huge success and was later made into a popular movie. While starring in the play, she also got the lead role in a Rodgers and Hammerstein TV musical, Cinderella. Her performance was broadcast live in 1957 in front of more than one hundred million TV viewers.7 Suddenly, Julie Andrews was a household name.
Julie wasn’t chosen to play Eliza in the My Fair Lady movie. Instead, producers gave the role to a better-known actress, Audrey Hepburn. But Hepburn couldn’t sing, so they had to dub in a different singer’s voice!
In 1964, Julie made the leap from stage to screen, where audiences loved her even more. Her first movie was Mary Poppins, in which she played a “practically perfect” nanny. The movie became the biggest box-office success in Disney history, and Julie won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
The next year, she starred as another perfect nanny in another beloved movie, The Sound of Music. It was the highest-grossing movie that year, and for her portrayal of Maria, the nanny who gets the von Trapp Family singing again, she earned an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe win for Best Actress in a Musical. With those two hit musicals, Julie Andrews became a bona fide movie star.
Julie initially turned down the role of Mary Poppins because she was pregnant. But Disney wanted her so badly, the movie was postponed until she was ready!
Over the next fifty years, Julie starred in many TV shows and movies—some hits, some not. You might recognize her from her more recent movies, The Princess Diaries 1 and 2, in which she played Queen Clarisse; or you might know her voice from the Shrek movies (she’s the queen, of course) and Despicable Me (she’s Gru’s mom).
In 1997, Julie got a hoarse throat while starring in a Broadway musical. She had surgery to remove several nodules from her vocal cords (a relatively common hazard for professional singers), but the surgery did permanent damage to her beautiful voice. She was never able to sing at her full range or strength again. Instead, she shifted to her other talents. Back in 1974, Julie had written her first children’s book, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles (published under her married name, Julie Andrews Edwards); after the botched surgery, she went on to publish more than thirty children’s books, going from movie star to bestselling author.
Back when she was 13, Julie did a screen test for MGM Studios. She sang a song and did a short acting scene, so producers could see if she had what it took to be in the movies. What did they think of the future Oscar winner? “She’s not photogenic enough for film.”8
Julie has won more awards and honors than you can count. In 2000, Queen Elizabeth made Julie a dame for her “services to the performing arts.” In 2002, the BBC put her on the list of “100 Greatest Britons.” And during her fifty-plus years in showbiz, Julie has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA (an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts), five Golden Globes, three Grammys, two Emmys, a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Disney Legend Award.
Even in her seventies and eighties, Julie hasn’t slowed down much. She still acts in movies and on TV, gives concerts, and writes bestsellers. Since her first standing ovation, this “prodigy with pigtails” has conquered Broadway, Hollywood, and even our bookshelves, showing the world there’s always a higher note to strive for.
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
I will rock the world by becoming a set designer and producer, making magic come to life onstage for thousands of people. I know that I will impact at least one person in my future. Knowing this, I’m excited to change the world!
KELSI GEORGIA 
AGE 16