December 2019 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | 153timeline of where I was and what
I was doing on any particular day.’
Thorough, certainly, but wasn’t
she anxious about turning over such
sensitive material to her daughter?
‘At times, writing my diary was the
only thing that was holding me
together,’ says Andrews, ‘but I felt
fine letting Emma have access to it all. I said, “Look, you’re a grown
woman with your own family, I don’t think there’s anything here
that’s going to shock you.” And Emma said, “Honestly, Mum, it’s
OK.” We a re ver y close, we have no secrets f rom each ot her.’
Rereading her old journals was not always a comfortable experi-
ence for Andrews either. ‘What a twit I was!’ she says. ‘The thing
about them is that everything is so mixed up. Sometimes I’m
recording what we had for dinner and at other times I’m in despair
about one of the children.’ The diaries seem to have served as a kind
of confessional when Andrews’ therapist, whom she sometimes saw
up to five times a week, was not available. On their pages, she pours
out her anxieties about the huge labour involved in
creating a blended family – as well as having Emma,
she is stepmother to the two children of her late
second husband, the film director Blake Edwards
(who was prone to bouts of near-suicidal depres-
sion), and is also the mother of two girls adopted
from Vietnam in the early 1970s. ‘Having such a
complex family structure was more unusual than it
is today – there wasn’t much advice available,’ she
says. ‘More than anything, I wanted to make it
work, to be a real mum.’
But Andrews wanted to be an artist too. It wasn’t
just that she needed the money to pay for the
houses in Gstaad and Malibu, and the constant air
fares for travelling between them; it was that music-
making was still ‘the thing that gave me absolute
joy’. An Oscar for Mary Poppins was followed by
the global phenomenon that was The Sound of
Music, a film that generated a mixed response, with The New York
Times dismissing it as overly sentimental. ‘What the critics like, what
the public likes and what you as the artist like can be very different
things,’ observes Andrews.
It was a pattern that was to repeat itself over the next three
decades. Some films received the acclaim that was their due –
Andrews picked up an Oscar nomination for the ahead-of-its-time
gender-swap comedy Victor/
Victoria – while others were less
well received. Star!, a 1968 bio pic
of Gertrude Lawrence, drew on
TALK ING POINTS
Clockwise from left:
Andrews practising
ballet in 1954. With
Audrey Hepburn,
at the 1965 Oscars
ceremony. ‘The
Sound of Music’.
‘Mary Poppins’Andrews’ intimate knowledge of music
hall, yet fell flat simply because critics
and audiences couldn’t accept that it
wasn’t another Sound of Music. Her sell-
out residency at Caesars Palace in Las
Vegas in 1976 was a smash, but you get
the sense that she did not find it her
most fulfilling work. After almost three-
quarters of a century in showbusiness,
Andrews says she has learnt to be philosophical (‘What matters is
that you do the best, most truthful work available to you at the
time’) and to be grateful for every opportunity. ‘My mother drilled
it into me – there’s always someone just as good as you waiting in
the wings,’ she says.
At 84, Andrews remains remarkably successful, despite having
lost her singing voice in 1997 following botched surgery on her vocal
cords – an event so traumatic that she is not sure she will ever be able
to discuss it in detail. She has found fresh ways of being creative,
including writing a successful series of children’s books with Emma.
Two years ago, Julie’s Greenroom, a Netflix show featuring ‘Ms Julie’
as the inspirational drama coach to a diverse group of child puppets,
became a hit. And she is currently working on
another Netflix production, Shonda Rhimes’
Bridgerton, a Regency romp in which she will play
the narrator Lady Whistledown, a sharp-
tongued gossip columnist. ‘The wonderful thing
about all these new ways of making art,’ says
Andrews, ‘is that, despite losing my original
voice, the one that brought me so much joy and
gave me my way in the world, I have been able to find another.’
‘Home Work: a Memoir of My Hollywood Years’ by Julie Andrews (£20,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is out now.From far left:
Andrews on the
June 1967 cover of
Bazaar. With her
daughter on the
set of ‘The Sound
of Music’