Billed as "Britain's youngest prima donna",[7] she rose to prominence in Broadway musicals starring as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1956) and Queen Guinevere in Camelot (1960).

[16] As the stage career of her mother and stepfather improved, they were able to afford better surroundings, first to Beckenham and then, as the war ended, back to the Andrews' hometown of Hersham.

During her initial shows, Andrews stood on a beer crate to sing into the microphone, performing a solo or a duet with her stepfather, while her mother played piano.

[25][26] Fellow child entertainer Petula Clark, three years her senior, recalled touring around the UK by train to sing for the troops alongside Andrews; they slept in the luggage racks.

[27] Andrews had her career breakthrough when her stepfather introduced her to managing director Val Parnell, whose Moss Empires controlled prominent performance venues in London.

At the age of 12, Andrews made her professional solo debut at the London Hippodrome, singing the difficult aria "Je suis Titania" from Mignon as part of a musical revue, called "Starlight Roof", on 22 October 1947.

Andrews performed alongside singer Danny Kaye, dancers the Nicholas Brothers, and the comedy team George and Bert Bernard.

[33] Andrews appeared on West End theatre at the London Casino, where she played one year each as Princess Badroulbadour in Aladdin and the egg in Humpty Dumpty.

[37][35] Near the end of her one-year run with The Boy Friend, Andrews was approached to audition to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe for the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.

[35] Andrews referred it as the best acting lesson she had ever received, later cementing the role with her "own touches and flourishes" and continuing to work on the character throughout her two-year run.

In 1960, Lerner and Loewe again cast her in a period musical as Queen Guinevere in Camelot, along with Richard Burton (as King Arthur) and newcomer Robert Goulet.

[35] Camelot premiered at the Majestic Theatre to "adequate" reviews, which Andrews credited to off-set production issues and comparisons to My Fair Lady.

[35] Casting for the film adaptation of My Fair Lady began in 1962; Alan Jay Lerner hoped for Andrews to reprise her role, but Warner Brothers studio head Jack Warner decided Andrews lacked sufficient name recognition; the part was played by the established film actress Audrey Hepburn, with the bulk of the singing dubbed by Marni Nixon.

Andrews relied largely on instinct for her portrayal, conceptualising her background and giving the character a "particular walk" and a turned-out stance to suit her ladylike sensibility.

[35] Andrews stated she relied on lyrics to anchor her to the film's songs and utilised vocal interpretation to "convey" Maria's character by "[hanging] onto words and the images they conjured".

She followed this television appearance with an Emmy Award-winning special, The Julie Andrews Show, which featured Gene Kelly and the New Christy Minstrels as guests.

[35] During a press interview, she "made the mistake" of expressing her unhappiness with her performance and subsequently received a "terse" letter from Hitchcock, which Andrews later cited as an "important lesson".

[35] The film was a box office success; critics described Andrews as "very much the leading lady" and "absolutely darling" as well as "deliciously spirited and dry".

As recounted on the Julie Andrews website, she performed the voice of Polynesia the parrot and "recorded some 700 sentences and sounds, which were placed on a computer chip that sat in the mechanical bird's mouth.

In the 2000 New Year Honours List, Andrews was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to the performing arts and received the award from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

On 17 March 2005, Andrews appeared onstage during the curtain calls for the musical of Mary Poppins at the Prince Edward Theatre in London's West End, where she gave a speech recalling her own memories from making the film and praised the cast for their new interpretation.

[100] On 28 October 2010, Andrews appeared, along with the actors who portrayed the cinematic von Trapp family members, on Oprah to commemorate the film's 45th anniversary.

[104][105] In her memoir, Home Work (2019), Andrews discussed being offered the role of Aunt Emma by Martin Scorsese for his film The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

[110] Andrews has twice directed a musical stage adaptation of The Great American Mousical, based on the 2006 children's book she wrote with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton.

[112] In 2015, Andrews made a surprise appearance at the Oscars, greeting Lady Gaga who paid her homage by singing a medley from The Sound of Music.

Andrews is joined by her assistant Gus (Giullian Yao Gioiello) and "Greenies", a cast of original puppets built by The Jim Henson Company.

On 9 June 2022, Andrews was honoured by the American Film Institute with a Lifetime Achievement Award, where she reflected on her career and received tributes by multiple artists.

[130][131][132] They were married for 41 years, until Edwards's death at the age of 88 on 15 December 2010 at the Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, due to complications of pneumonia.

[138] Once termed "Britain's youngest prima donna",[139][140] Andrews's classically trained soprano voice,[141] lauded for its "pure and clear" sound,[142] has been described as light, bright and operatic in tone.

At the time, Andrews described her own voice as "extremely high and thin", feeling that it lacked "the necessary guts and weight for opera", preferring musical theatre instead.