Julie Andrews, 79, finds new favourite things

‘I’m just getting over some road rage,” says Julie Andrews, while stuck in Los Angeles traffic. She’s kidding, of course. Rage is something you wouldn’t likely associate with Andrews, any more than you’d expect discretion from Kim Kardashian. The legendary actress and singer, 79, is renowned for her gracious good manners and elegant professionalism. “That’s very kind of you,” she’ll say repeatedly in conversation, or something to that effect, her diction as dreamy as ever.

When Andrews filmed the screen adaptation of The Sound Of Music, she was 28 and already a huge Broadway star, having introduced the roles of Eliza Dolittle and Guenevere in the respective Lerner and Loewe musicals My Fair Lady and Camelot. Critics and audiences fell in love with her purity of expression — not just her sterling soprano voice, but the way she communicated lyrics so clearly and naturally.

The Sound Of Music, released exactly 50 years ago this week, brought those assets to a wider audience, and made Andrews — who by then had also filmed 1964’s Mary Poppins, which earned her an Academy Award, and The Americanization Of Emily — one of the biggest movie stars in the world. If her leading-lady heyday would prove relatively brief, her performance as Maria von Trapp would influence generations of aspiring singers — among them Lady Gaga, who paid Andrews and The Sound Of Music homage at this year’s Oscars.

“I’ve been a big fan of Lady Gaga,” says Andrews, who also praises more obvious successors, such as Audra McDonald and Kristin Chenoweth. But Gaga and Andrews didn’t meet in person until the Oscars show was already in progress: “Our first hug was literally 45 minutes before going on.” Gaga sought Andrews’ approval of her medley — and got it. “I thought what she did was very classy,” Andrews says. Andrews’ own singing voice, sadly, was damaged in a surgical mishap in the late 90s. “I’ve got a few bass notes that I still own,” she quips. “Maybe I could take up as a jazz singer.”

Andrews remained active in films in the years following her surgery, even lending her voice to animated movies, including the Shrek series and Despicable Me. But she also found a new family-friendly creative outlet in children’s books. Having written a couple in the early 70s, she plunged back in, collaborating with daughter Emma Walton Hamilton. They’ve crafted more than 25; one, The Great American Mousical, was adapted into a musical that Andrews directed in 2012 and is still being refined. An earlier book by Andrews, The Last Of The Really Great Whangdoodles, is being developed into a musical film.

“When I wasn’t singing anymore, I thought, ‘I must do something’,” Andrews says; and writing “was a major revelation” — a different way to express the love of words that made her singing so meticulous and true.

Of course, Andrews would be too modest to put it that way herself. “I just feel like I’ve been really lucky,” she says. She has regrets: “I’ve always wished I had been able to do more legitimate plays.”

She may do them yet. Andrews has no plans down to slow down as her 80th birthday approaches. She’s considering a follow-up to Home: A Memoir Of My Early Years, a 2009 autobiography tracing her life into the early 60s; and is also preserving the legacy of her late husband, director/screenwriter Blake Edwards, by serving as executive producer of a new Pink Panther movie in development.

“I have some directing projects I’d like to do, that I still hope to get into the mix somewhere,” Andrews adds. “So I’m still busy — I’m just busy doing different things.”