Julie Andrews reflects on life, career in ‘Home Work’
LOS ANGELES — Everyone is on their best behavior when Julie Andrews is around.
It’s early June in Los Angeles and Andrews is coming to film segments for a night of guest programming on Turner Classic Movies and speak about her new book, “Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years,” which hit shelves this week. The air is thick with anticipation before her arrival. When her car does appear — as prompt as Mary Poppins — the crew, the producers and even the catering staff all abandon their lunches and stand to attention. When she steps out, some even start to softly clap, as though she is royalty or perhaps even something bigger than that.
But Andrews, seemingly knowing the effect she has on people, brings it back down to earth.
“Hi gang!” she says cheerily.
Even TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, who is no stranger to speaking to screen legends, is a little awe struck.
“God, every time you talk I think, ‘She sounds just like Julie Andrews!'” Mankiewicz says to his guest.
Andrews just laughs. “Shut up, shut up,” she says.
For the next few hours, The Associated Press got a front-row seat as Andrews and Mankiewicz turned the little soundstage into a cozy living room for movie lovers as they discussed three films from her career: 1967’s “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” 1982’s “Victor/Victoria” and 1986’s “That’s Life!,” all of which she touches on in her memoir.
In talking about George Roy Hill’s adaptation of “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” Andrews reflected on her friendship with co-star Mary Tyler Moore.
“She called me Millie and I called her Miss Dorothy for the rest of our lives,” Andrews, who just turned 84 this month, said. “I miss her so much.”
All of the films are special to Andrews in some way, but naturally the ones she made with Blake Edwards, her husband of 41 years, are particularly so.
“We made seven pictures together,” Andrews said. “The first one, ‘Darling Lili,’ was such a huge flop it’s amazing we stayed together for 41 years!”
On “Victor/Victoria,” she said Edwards advised her to watch her old friend James Garner for inspiration, telling her “not only is he a great actor, but he’s a great reactor.”
“Blake would love to be sitting right here,” she said wistfully as Mankiewicz praised the film. “He probably is.”
In “Home Work,” Andrews writes frankly about her relationship with Edwards, a man she remains deeply and wholly in love with and in reverence of but who also had his struggles with prescription drugs.
“I wanted to honor him properly. I wanted it to be truthful, but didn’t want to hurt anybody, especially my kids,” Andrews said later that day.
Deciding what to leave in and what to take out, she said “was hard and I’m very nervous about that.”
The films and her conversation with Mankiewicz will air on TCM on Oct. 29 beginning at 8 p.m. and serve as a companion to the memoir, co-written with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, which picks up where her first memoir, “Home: A Memoir of My Early Years,” left off: Her arrival in Los Angeles to film “Mary Poppins,” with then-husband Tony Walton and baby Emma in tow.
Aided by the diaries she kept throughout her life, some excerpts of which are included in “Home Work,” Andrews gives a thoughtful account of her personal and professional highs, lows and everything in between. She tells amusing anecdotes about Alfred Hitchcock teaching her about lenses on “Torn Curtain,” her fear of driving on freeways during “Mary Poppins” and how Edwards stood up for her when people at a party were trying to pressure her into doing drugs.
And she does not shy away from personal stories either: About financial worries, the breakup of her first marriage, deciding to adopt two daughters from an orphanage in Vietnam and her complex relationship with her parents.
“There is so much more if I do write about it, ‘Victor/Victoria’ on Broadway and ‘Princess Diaries’ and other things and getting into the book writing,” Andrews said. “There might be (another). But not just yet, I only finished it 10 days ago!”
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2VMXEqR
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