Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews (Julie Andrews) was born as Julia Elizabeth Wells on October, 1, 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Her mother, Barbara Wells (née Morris), was married to Edward C. "Ted" Wells, a teacher of metal and woodworking, but Andrews was conceived as a result of an affair her mother had with a family friend. Julie Andrews is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author.Julie Andrews was a former British child actress and singer who made her Broadway debut 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), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and The Sound of Music (1965): the roles for which she is still best-known. Her voice spanned four octaves until it was damaged by a throat operation in 1997.
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."
Julie Andrews got her big break when her stepfather introduced her to Val Parnell, whose Moss Empires controlled prominent venues in London. Julie 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.
In 1966 Julie Andrews starred with Paul Newman in the Hitchcock thriller Torn Curtain.
By the end of 1967, Julie Andrews had appeared in the television special Cinderella; the biggest Broadway musical of its time, My Fair Lady; the largest-selling long-playing album, the original cast recording of My Fair Lady; the biggest hit in Disney's history, Mary Poppins; the highest grossing movie of 1966, Hawaii; the biggest and second biggest hits in Universal's history, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Torn Curtain; and the biggest hit in 20th Century Fox's history The Sound of Music.
On August 29, 2010, the British press reports the news that a planned tribute for Julie Andrews' 75th birthday, on a BBC television special, might not go ahead for a series of reasons that, at the moment, remain unclear.
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