A nun with a switchblade

"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

That marvel of twentieth century musicals Dame Julie Andrews is 72 years old today!

A product of the British Music Hall theatre and a radio star at a very young age, Julie came to international attention when she played the role of Eliza Doolittle in the original stage production of My Fair Lady. With her four octave range and crystal clear diction, she was widely applauded on both sides of the Atlantic, and tipped for stardom.

However, she was cruelly robbed when she lost out on the part in the big-screen adaptation of the musical to the more established screen beauty Audrey Hepburn. But Julie's time came almost immediately and she hit the big time with her performance as Mary Poppins, which won her a Best Actress Oscar in 1964, followed soon after by her timeless role as Maria in the multi-award-winning The Sound of Music in 1965.

Famously described by her co-star Christopher Plummer as "Like a nun with a switchblade" for her tenacity, this massive success led Julie to make many other films during the 1960s, including one of my all-time favourites Thoroughly Modern Millie, as well as Star!, Torn Curtain and Darling Lili. Although never quite the "glamour girl" in the traditional Hollywood style she was adopted wholeheartedly by the public in the USA, and went on to make several extremely successful TV shows, many in collaboration with her long-term friend Carol Burnett.

In 1969 Julie married director-producer-writer Blake Edwards, who had produced her film Star!, and they worked on several other films together including The Tamarind Seed, 10, S.O.B., That's Life and - best of all - Victor/Victoria.

This most wonderful musical broke new ground with its convoluted plot about a woman who masquerades as a man impersonating a woman (whew!) to become famous, and its completely unsensational inclusion of gay characters alongside gangsters and molls led our Julie even more into the role of a fully-fledged gay icon than ever before!

Julie Andrews- Le Jazz Hot

Julie Andrews has been one of the most popular of British actresses for more than five decades and in 1989 she was awarded the British Academy for Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Special Tribute - the first actress ever to receive this prestigious award. In 2000 she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire for lifetime achievements in the arts and humanities. And just last year (2006) she received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild of America.

Despite continuing difficulties with her singing voice - an operation in 1997 to remove a small polyp from her vocal cords caused serious damage, which led her to withdraw completely from singing for more than seven years - Dame Julie Andrews continues to brighten our lives, and lent her voice to the role of Queen Lillian in Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third.

Gawd bless you Ma'am - and happy birthday!

Julie Andrews on IMDB