Julie Andrews’ public image has always been defined by grace, composure, and one of the most extraordinary voices of the 20th century. But behind the Oscar-winning career and the beloved roles in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music lies a private life shaped by two very different marriages, five children gathered through love, loss, and international adoption, and a grief she has said she still carries every day. Born Julia Elizabeth Wells on October 1st, 1935, in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, she was performing in variety shows across England by the age of nine. Her parents’ unhappy marriage ended in divorce, and her mother remarried a vaudeville comedian named Ted Andrews, whose surname Julie eventually took professionally.
She was incorporated into the family’s performing act at a very young age, and by 12, her vocal coach described her four-octave range as something she had never encountered in her professional experience. At 13, she became the youngest solo performer ever to appear at a Royal Variety Performance. Tony Walton was 12 years old when he first saw her perform in the 1948 Christmas pantomime Humpty Dumpty at the George Hotel in Luton. He went backstage for her autograph, and the two became pen pals, maintaining a correspondence for years.
The connection deepened into a relationship, and they married on May 10th, 1959, at St. Mary Oatlands Church in Weybridge, Surrey. At the time, Julie was already a Broadway star, having appeared in The Boyfriend, My Fair Lady, and Camelot. Tony, who would eventually become one of the most celebrated production designers in theater and win an Academy Award for his costume designs for All That Jazz, was early in his career.
Their daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, was born in November 1962, just before the whirlwind of Mary Poppins transformed Julie into the most famous actress in the world. The varying demands of their careers created geographic distance that eventually proved unsustainable. Julie filed for divorce in Santa Monica, California, in November 1967, citing the strains of constant separation. The divorce was finalized in 1968.
Yet what followed was unusual: they remained genuine, lasting friends. They collaborated on children’s books with Emma, appeared at events honoring each other’s work, and co-parented with a warmth Emma has described as a foundational blessing of her childhood. When Tony died on March 2nd, 2022, at age 87, Julie called him her “dearest and oldest friend” and said his talent was “simply monumental. ”
The beginning of her second marriage was set against a strikingly different backdrop.
Blake Edwards, a director known for Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther series, was also going through the end of his first marriage in the mid-1960s, and like Julie, he was seeing a therapist during this period. Julie has credited therapy with saving her life, describing it as the work that helped her become more stable and self-aware. They encountered each other in the parking area near their therapy sessions in Los Angeles, and Blake, in his Rolls-Royce, rolled down his window and honked at her. She described him as “the most charismatic and interesting fellow” she had ever met, and the drive he took her on along the Pacific Coast Highway, ending at the Malibu bluffs, felt “unbelievably romantic” to her.
They married in November 1969 at her home. He was 47; she was 34. Their first creative collaboration, Darling Lili, released in 1970, was a commercial failure after the studio cut it significantly from his original vision, but the marriage held. The couple built a large blended family, bringing Emma and Blake’s two children from his first marriage, Geoffrey and Jennifer, together.
After being unable to have biological children together, they adopted two daughters from Vietnam: Amy Lee Edwards in 1974 and Joanna Lynn Edwards in 1975. Julie traveled to Southeast Asia to see the conditions in the orphanages firsthand, an experience she has described in terms that speak to her confrontation with the human cost of the war. The family eventually settled in Gstaad, Switzerland, after Blake became frustrated with studio interference in his films. Their most successful collaboration came with Victor/Victoria in 1982, a comedy of identity and performance in which Julie played a woman impersonating a man impersonating a female cabaret performer.
It was a commercial and critical success, earning her a best actress nomination and winning the Oscar for best original score. Julie later returned to the stage in the 1995 Broadway adaptation, earning a Tony nomination, and Blake attended the show as often as he could throughout its run. The marriage lasted 41 years. Julie once described marriage as “one day at a time” and called it “a big up and down graph” and the hardest work she had ever done.
Blake was not a simple or easy man; he was known for fighting the institutional battles of the film industry, but friends said he was genuinely in love with her and invested in their partnership. In 1997, a routine surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York damaged her vocal cords permanently, ending the four-octave singing voice that had defined her life. She could still speak but could not sing as she once had, and she has said she will never recover that voice. She filed a malpractice lawsuit and reached a financial settlement, but the settlement was not the voice.
Blake was at her side, helping her navigate the loss. Blake Edwards died on December 15th, 2010, at age 88, from complications following a brief bout of pneumonia. The onset was sudden, and the end came quickly. In the years since, Julie has not remarried and has spoken frankly about the ongoing experience of missing him.
She told Good Morning Britain that on some days she misses him dreadfully, described their love as a true story, and said she would always carry him in her heart. She has continued working, appearing as Queen Clarisse in The Princess Diaries films, voicing a character in Despicable Me, and narrating Netflix’s Bridgerton beginning in 2020. She has kept writing children’s books with Emma, her most sustained creative collaborator. The blended family has stayed close, extending into grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
At 90 years old, Julie Andrews remains present, still working, and still carrying everything the years have added to her life. The voice is not what it was, but the intelligence, warmth, and specific human aliveness remain fully intact.