Julie Andrews Quotes

Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.

- Julie Andrews

One of our books has been made into a musical, 'The Great American Mousical,' which I directed at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. And another, 'Simeon's Gift,' has been adapted for a symphony orchestra and five performers. I'm also a very proud member of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

- Julie Andrews

I adored my birth father and constantly worried that I was being disloyal to him and his schoolteacher roots if I spent too much time performing and enjoying it.

- Julie Andrews

Whenever I think of my birthplace, Walton-on-Thames, my reference first and foremost is the river. I love the smell of the river; love its history, its gentleness. I was aware of its presence from my earliest years. Its majesty centered me, calmed me, was a solace to a certain extent.

- Julie Andrews

I was named after my two grandmothers - Julia Elizabeth.

- Julie Andrews

Who could have imagined that life would have taken such marvelous twists and turns or that I would often be so fortunate to be in the right place at the right time?

- Julie Andrews

In my life, it would probably be giving birth to my daughter. That probably is the most, the thing that moved me the most, was the most memorable, the most wonderful, the most miraculous. I think a lot of women would probably feel that way, too.

- Julie Andrews

My mother and stepfather were in Vaudeville. And my stepfather was an alcoholic. It was a lot of roller coaster times. But it's all I knew. I think they did the best they could under the circumstances, with me and all the family.

- Julie Andrews

I come from a long line of below-stairs maids and gardeners. Good ol' peasant stock. My mother and her sister made a quantum leap out of that life. Then I made another quantum leap.

- Julie Andrews

Did you ever notice the color of Mary Poppins' petticoats? They were kind of orange and apricot and red. I think she had a secret life going on there.

- Julie Andrews

I don't think I have the image that say, Judy Garland has, or Bette Davis.

- Julie Andrews

I was lucky enough to be the lady that was asked to be Maria in the Sound Of Music, and that film was fortunate enough to be huge hit. The same with Mary Poppins. I got terribly lucky in that respect.

- Julie Andrews

I think I'm just proudest to be the lady who was asked to play Mary Poppins. She's such a wonderful character, and there's so much tremendous talent out there. So I feel very lucky to be the one who got to play her.

- Julie Andrews

When I did 'The Sound of Music' and 'Mary Poppins' and 'The Americanization of Emily,' all three were in the can and had not yet been released. So I was driving around having a fine time learning about how to make movies and enjoying myself enormously, and then they were released, and it was quite an assault, in a way.

- Julie Andrews

There are elements of me in the roles I've played in the past. But people forget that Mary Poppins was just a role, too.

- Julie Andrews

For me, whenever I choose a song to sing, it's about the lyric first.

- Julie Andrews

I turned down 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brody' with Maggie Smith. I think she got the Academy Award.

- Julie Andrews

Almost every morning when I go to the studio to work, I discover a fresh rose in the bud vase on my dressing table... one living and vital thing in a dusty arena of powder and tissue and matches and greasepaint.

- Julie Andrews

Behaving like a princess is work. It's not just about looking beautiful or wearing a crown. It's more about how you are inside.

- Julie Andrews

I had a teacher who stressed for me the importance of diction in terms of... I want to be very careful about how I say this... in terms of supporting one's voice when one is singing. In other words, if you hold on to your words, your voice will pull through for you when you're singing. So be true to your vowels.

- Julie Andrews

If you're not educated to enjoy the arts, if you're not taken to a concert, or you don't hear something beautiful, you don't know what you're missing.

- Julie Andrews

I think every young girl at some point in her early life wonders what it's like to be a princess. They like the idea of dressing up and the fun of it.

- Julie Andrews

All love shifts and changes. I don't know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time.

- Julie Andrews

When one door closes, another window opens.

- Julie Andrews

I was a child prodigy who had a freak voice of something like four octaves.

- Julie Andrews

I am told that the first comprehensible word I uttered as a child was 'home.'

- Julie Andrews

There is one thing I should say, and it's important: Young Broadway singers and anybody who is an orator of any kind - lawyers who have to speak in court or pastors or anyone who has a lot of stress on their vocal cords: You should do the maintenance. You should do whatever it takes to feel fresh and good.

- Julie Andrews

A lot of my life happened in great, wonderful bursts of good fortune, and then I would race to be worthy of it.

- Julie Andrews

I thought it was all a flash in the pan. It wasn't until Broadway came along that I felt I had really made it.

- Julie Andrews

The loveliest roles, for me, have a growth arc - a beginning, a middle, and an end - and I'm always grateful when I can find one of those emotional journeys.

- Julie Andrews

I love my garden. I love my privacy. I'm very fierce about it. I try not to let too many people into my home. That's my private place.

- Julie Andrews

I play with my grandchildren. I tend to my garden, which I love. Of course, I love to read, and family is really what it's all about.

- Julie Andrews

I'd love to have a really flourishing vegetable garden, and I'd love to have a better area for a rose garden or a cutting garden, but I don't. You have to develop a garden in the way that it's meant to be developed.

- Julie Andrews

I miss singing with an orchestra because that's the most uplifting thing that I ever knew. It is just such a fabulous feeling.

- Julie Andrews

Singing has been a cherished gift, and my inability to sing has been a devastating blow.

- Julie Andrews

A lot of films seem to go to the lowest common denominator.

- Julie Andrews

I had toured around England endlessly throughout my teens, but when I came to the U.S. to perform on Broadway, that was a huge step.

- Julie Andrews

I really feel very blessed, and I don't forget it, either; there's an awful lot of wonderful talent in this world, and I just seem to be in the right place at the right time.

- Julie Andrews

When I've least expected it, an enormous opportunity or stroke of luck has crossed right under my nose. So I tell everybody, if you're passionate about what you do and you love it, do it. But do your homework. Because you'll never know when the opportunity is going to happen.

- Julie Andrews

I didn't know other children from divorced families, and I was a bit of a lost soul for a while. Then suddenly, I was performing. And it gave me an identity.

- Julie Andrews

I'd say just go with the flow. And I take my hat off to any mother out there who works full-time and raises a family as well. It's hard work.

- Julie Andrews

My mum gave me pretty good genes in that department. She had gorgeous skin. That good English complexion. She never seemed to have a blemish that I knew of.

- Julie Andrews

Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.

- Julie Andrews

I have always wished I could learn to be a potter. I love collecting ceramics; it would be so fulfilling to create something lovely.

- Julie Andrews

I love to prune my roses. That's the one thing I really feel I do pretty well. Other things I usually, because I travel so much, leave to my gardeners who know what I love. But I do love to prune them, because you forget everything else. It's like if you're a painter, you can forget everything else while you're doing it.

- Julie Andrews

Every time I go out to perform, believe me. You never lose that fear of, 'I hope I do it right. I hope I don't fall flat on my face. I hope this will be good for them.'

- Julie Andrews

I am thrilled to be dame. It's one of those - the fact that you have been honored by your country is what it's all about, and it just feels good right there.

- Julie Andrews

I do get a lot of gifts. I get a lot of things to sign, too. People do collect the memorabilia. Between 'Poppins' and 'The Sound of Music,' there were beautiful plates that they made, and I've signed a lot of them.

- Julie Andrews

Programs that bring the arts to young kids are always the first to be cut. It's mind-boggling to me.

- Julie Andrews

I've made my pact with the Lord for the next lifetime. I would love to be a first-class musician. A super one.

- Julie Andrews

How dare one act like a diva when you have a lot of work to do and you need to find your disciplines and so on?

- Julie Andrews

I love that President and Mrs. Obama are embracing the arts. I am so delighted.

- Julie Andrews

Actually, what I did, because I couldn't make sense of it, and I have to have lyrics that make sense, I decided the best way to sing 'I Have Confidence' was to go completely nuts with panic and fear.

- Julie Andrews

In my early years, I was much too ignorant and didn't realize how desperately important it all is, how really important the lyrics are. And for me as a singer, I am a lady who takes the lyrics first.

- Julie Andrews

And I think as long as a song has beautiful lyrics, I'm so happy.

- Julie Andrews

Sometimes opportunities float right past your nose. Work hard, apply yourself, and be ready. When an opportunity comes you can grab it.

- Julie Andrews

I did a lot of touring in my youth, and I learnt very quickly that giving is what it's all about. It's about the gift of making an audience feel great and forget their cares, if only for a few hours.

- Julie Andrews

If the director says you can do better, particularly in a love scene, then it is rather embarrassing.

- Julie Andrews

I am very proud to be British. I'm very conscious of carrying my country with me wherever I go. I feel I need to represent it well.

- Julie Andrews

As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually.

- Julie Andrews

I like - I actually love classical music very much.

- Julie Andrews

All careers go up and down like friendships, like marriages, like anything else, and you can't bat a thousand all the time.

- Julie Andrews

The thrill of being in front of a camera remains exactly the same.

- Julie Andrews

I'm beginning to think that I like the behind-the-scenes work as much as I do in front of the camera as I get a little bit older.

- Julie Andrews

My sense of the family history is somewhat sketchy, because my mother kept a great deal to herself.

- Julie Andrews

Our first visit to the Creature Shop is one of the days I will never, ever forget. There was just so much to see and admire and be gobsmacked by.

- Julie Andrews

If you've been fortunate enough to do a film that appeals to the entire family, that's the audience that's probably going to come back to you in something else.

- Julie Andrews

Garry Marshall is a joy. I feel so utterly safe in his hands.

- Julie Andrews

Truthfully, I mostly can be as private as I want.

- Julie Andrews

The arts bridge cultures; they're good for the economy, and they're good for fostering empathy and decency.

- Julie Andrews

More than anything, the arts are the best teaching tool.

- Julie Andrews

I think any director is intimidating.

- Julie Andrews

I was working from a very early age.

- Julie Andrews

I was raised never to carp about things and never to moan, because in vaudeville, which is my background, you just got on with it through all kinds of adversities.

- Julie Andrews

My parents were in Vaudeville, in musical. And I would tour with them and had a couple of wonderfully lucky breaks in England.

- Julie Andrews

When you are traveling in vaudeville, you experience so many different kinds of audiences, depending on what time of the week it is, how long the pubs have been open, and things like that.

- Julie Andrews

Who would have thought that a story about a professor of phonetics would result in it being probably one of the great shows ever for musical theatre? It's a seemingly odd subject.

- Julie Andrews

I don't think today's younger audience... would even know what 1920s musicals were like.

- Julie Andrews

Touring itself - and I was very young, and a lot of it I did by myself - it's lonely, but it does give you some kind of spine, I think. It does give you some kind of grit.

- Julie Andrews

My mother was terribly important to me, and I know how much I yearned for her in my youth, but I don't think I truly trusted her.

- Julie Andrews

'Simeon's Gift' is really - it's about a musician who - in the Middle Ages, who goes out to find his muse.

- Julie Andrews

I think that the best way to explain that is that my mother gave me all the color and character and flare and liveliness, and my father gave me all the sanity and nature and all the things that helped me be a more rounded human being.

- Julie Andrews

I'm just honored that some of my little contributions I've written with my daughter are doing well.

- Julie Andrews

Because of the Thames I have always loved inland waterways - water in general, water sounds - there's music in water. Brooks babbling, fountains splashing. Weirs, waterfalls; tumbling, gushing.

- Julie Andrews

Growing up in England, of course you do absorb certain ways the royals wave their hands and carry themselves.

- Julie Andrews

Let me put it this way: I can sing a hell of an 'Old Man River,' way down in the bass.

- Julie Andrews

I think it's the essence of any film and any stage production - any work where you do work with other people - of course collaboration is hugely important. One does, for awhile, become family.

- Julie Andrews

I've always admired gardens. My father was a great nature lover and would always take me for walks. We lived not too far away from huge rhododendron estates and azalea estates, and when they're in bloom in England, they're just riotous.

- Julie Andrews

I've long wanted to introduce children to the wonder of the arts.

- Julie Andrews

I know I probably have a lot of rage in me that I don't show. But I'm not about to wallow in it or reveal it.

- Julie Andrews

You'd think, of course, it's about the melody - that's a given. But really, I'm no good at singing a song unless it has a good lyric.

- Julie Andrews

Actually, I had a lot of good people with me - my mother's sister did a lot of taking care of me, and I suppose I got more attention than my stepbrothers because at least I got to travel with my parents.

- Julie Andrews

The arts are usually the first thing to be cut in schools or regional programs.

- Julie Andrews

I justified working so hard by knowing that I was helping to maintain the roof over our heads.

- Julie Andrews

I'm resilient, and I'm professional.

- Julie Andrews

You just don't know in life. Life knocks you about and pushes you over boundaries. But be ready. Do your homework; that's all I can say.

- Julie Andrews

I was a very sad little girl.

- Julie Andrews

I do not knock 'Poppins' or 'The Sound of Music.' They gave me pleasure, and I know they've given a lot of people enormous pleasure.

- Julie Andrews

I am a liberated woman. And I do believe if a woman does equal work she should be paid equal money. But personally I am feminine and I do like male authority to lean on.

- Julie Andrews

I love singing, and I came to absolutely adore it in the later part of my career.

- Julie Andrews

I'm never sure one is exactly ready. You jump in, with both feet, into a very big fish pond.

- Julie Andrews

Like most girls, I fantasized about being some sort of a princess.

- Julie Andrews

I had no education whatsoever, and my mother said, 'Oh, you'll get a much better education in life.' I did to some extent, though I always wish I could have tried it.

- Julie Andrews

Broadway is a tough, tough arena for singing.

- Julie Andrews

I'd say almost that words come first, melody second.

- Julie Andrews

I think birth and motherhood are not things that you're trained to do. You might have a good example in your own mum, but nobody teaches you how to be a really great mum.

- Julie Andrews

I'm the lucky one who got asked to do 'The Sound of Music' and all the other lovely things that I did.

- Julie Andrews

I'm the lucky lady that was asked to be in those wonderful iconic pieces.

- Julie Andrews

The arts need funding.

- Julie Andrews

I've always seen the cup as half-full.

- Julie Andrews

I have been called a nun with a switchblade where my privacy is concerned. I think there's a point where one says, that's for family, that's for me.

- Julie Andrews

I would be a fool to deny my own abilities.

- Julie Andrews

I am an optimistic lady.

- Julie Andrews

I did 'My Fair Lady' for almost 3 1/2 years, eight performances a week. It was a marathon.

- Julie Andrews

I did all of my learning on 'My Fair Lady.'

- Julie Andrews

I do wish somewhere there was a film of our stage production of 'My Fair Lady.'

- Julie Andrews

I grew up knowing only war, so for me, it was the way things were. It wasn't pleasant by any means.

- Julie Andrews

I'm not very good with rap and things like that.

- Julie Andrews

I'm not very good with some of the more modern songs that have an awful lot of 'doo wah wahs,' if you know what I mean, because I can't do anything with them.

- Julie Andrews

On the whole, I think women wear too much and are to fussy. You can't see the person for all the clutter.

- Julie Andrews

I hate the word wholesome.

- Julie Andrews

I don't want to be thought of as wholesome.

- Julie Andrews

Some of my own books are being developed - one as a Broadway musical.

- Julie Andrews

Much as I adore the melodies, I choose a song for what it has to say.

- Julie Andrews

There's nothing like the joy of the arts, and promoting the arts early in children is going to give them such a start in life in a way.

- Julie Andrews

You can't bring the arts too soon to kids.

- Julie Andrews

By nature, I really am a fairly bouncy and sunny individual.

- Julie Andrews

I seem to be very busy, and I seem always to be working.

- Julie Andrews

You take any job that comes along, and if you're really lucky, the movie takes off.

- Julie Andrews

Singing has never been particularly easy for me.

- Julie Andrews

I've got a good right hook.

- Julie Andrews

You never start out being a star.

- Julie Andrews

You're always changing your thoughts about things.

- Julie Andrews

Marriage is the hardest work you're ever going to do.

- Julie Andrews

My voice needed oiling, and then it took off.

- Julie Andrews

I had a lot of learning on my feet.

- Julie Andrews

Sometimes I'm so sweet even I can't stand it.

- Julie Andrews