Julie Andrews
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 1992
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Julie Andrews, the star of such film favourites as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews discovered she had an unusual talent for singing quite early and first appeared on stage alongside her step-father and her mother in their act, touring the Variety theatres of Great Britain in the 1940s and early 1950s. She had an enormous hit in a show at the London Hippodrome Theatre when she was just a teenager, and then appeared regularly on Educating Archie, one of radio's biggest programmes in the 1950s.
But it was appearing on Broadway that led her to being cast in the stage version of My Fair Lady, with Rex Harrison that really began to establish her as an international star, and then her first movie role, as Mary Poppins, which won her an Oscar that brought her to the attention of millions worldwide.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Piano Concerto in G by Maurice Ravel Book: The Once and Future King by T H White Luxury: Piano
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 1992, |
| 0:11.0 | and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is an actress. At the age of 13 she sang at a Royal Command performance. |
| 0:35.4 | Before she was 20, she became a Broadway star playing the lead roles in The Boyfriend and My Fair Lady. |
| 0:41.2 | She won an Oscar for the first film she ever made, Mary Poppins, and the |
| 0:45.6 | worldwide affection of millions for her second, The Sound of Music. What more is that to be said? |
| 0:50.8 | She is, of course, Julie Andrews. You've never been coy at all about your age |
| 0:55.6 | Julie so you won't mind my saying that you've just celebrated your 57th birthday. |
| 0:59.4 | Right. I'm sure I'm not the first person to say it but you genuinely do not look at. |
| 1:04.1 | Now is that hard work? I also genuinely don't think I feel it. Some days I do but mostly I don't. |
| 1:08.7 | How hard do you work at it? Your appearance. Oh only as hard as I absolutely need to to get me by. I'm not a |
| 1:16.1 | fanatic about exercise, although I do do it. I have to be careful what I eat. I have a |
| 1:21.1 | tendency towards low blood sugar, so actually it stood me in good |
| 1:24.8 | stead because it makes me eat sensibly and balanced meals with some protein |
| 1:29.2 | and some carbohydrates and things like you. But are you a pill popper in the vitamin sense? I do take vitamins yes and I believe in them I believe in vitamin C and things like that. |
| 1:39.0 | Are you a bit of a hypochondria? Yes that would be a good description but I hope the kind that eventually becomes rather sensible since you learn about things and know what might be best. |
| 1:48.0 | And you have to work hard at the voice as well again to maintain the clarity there. |
| 1:52.0 | As you get older, particularly you do, because... the voice as well again to maintain the clarity there. |
| 1:53.0 | As you get older, particularly you do because it just isn't as flexible and as |
| 1:57.4 | client as it used to be. |
| 1:58.4 | What do you do? |
... |
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