Julie Andrews, a famous actress who starred in "The Sound of Music" and "Happy People", won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 76th Venice Film Festival, and throughout her early-term acting career, she will find that she experienced the golden age of Hollywood cinema.
Julie Andrews, who played Maria in The Sound of Music.
Born in England in 1935, Julie Andrews was gifted in cabaret acting since she was a child, and it is said that when she was 8 years old, her parents noticed that her daughter's voice was strong, with a vocal range of 48 degrees, and she began professional vocal training.
At the age of 12, Julie Andrews sang on stage under the guidance of the actor's parents, and at the age of 13, she participated in the Royal Court show in London, singing songs for Queen Elizabeth and others. He later became active in London's West End as a child star and singer.
Julie Andrews was the first to have great success on the theatrical stage. In 1954, she debuted on Broadway in The Boy Friend, which won the World Theatre Award. Julie then starred on Broadway as the lead actress in "Lady Of the Dead," a musical that was performed on Broadway from March 15, 1956 to September 26, 1962, with an unprecedented success of 6 years and 6 months and 2,717 performances. The play has been widely performed worldwide and has been adapted into a film (starring Audrey Hepburn) and is considered the perfect "musical". Julie Andrews was also nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in The Lady.
Since then, the movie she starred in, "Full of Joy", won her an Oscar. In this film, Julie plays a fairy who incarnates as a nanny named Mary Poppins to take care of two mischievous children who are mischievous because of their busy parents, and eventually let the family understand the value of family affection.
Played the fairy who became a nanny in "Happy People".
In this film, Julie showed her excellent singing voice and acting talent, and her beautiful voice healed many audiences. Therefore, some people comment that there is only one Mary Poppins in the world, and there are many unhappy children in the world. Most children grow up, discard the whimsy of the past, and become one of thousands of mediocre, depressed, pale, and chewing wax. And for the children, the most important thing is to keep those colorful reverie and let them play it out over and over again in the little head. This movie had a huge impact at the time, and for people today, even if they haven't seen it, they must have heard the songs in the movie.
The year after the huge success of "Happy People", Julie Andrews starred in the film "The Sound of Music", which became an insurmountable classic of her life. The film is based on a true story that takes place in World War II, and Julie Andrews plays Maria, who is lively, kind and charming, and her love affair with Colonel Trapp is sincere and simple.
The second half of the film focuses on how the protagonist's family escaped Nazi rule and finally crossed the Alps with the help of friends to successfully gain freedom. At this moment, the theme of the film has been sublimated.
Maria with the children in The Sound of Music.
The music in the film is already an indisputable classic, such as "Doraemon", "The Lonely Shepherd", "Edelweiss", "The Sound of Music" and other songs are still familiar to us, and Julie Andrews's voice has the power to penetrate time.
In fact, in 1965, when the film was released, the genre of song and dance films, which had once swept Hollywood, had declined, and Hollywood films were being replaced by new forms. The Sound of Music is arguably the last of Hollywood's Golden Age song and dance genres. Julie Andrews single-handedly made such a film forever remembered in film history.
Since then, Julie has been active in the field of stage art and has starred in a large number of musicals. Her 1982 film Hermaphroditics earned her another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, which was also directed by her second husband, Blake Edwards. The two lived together for the rest of their lives until Edwards' death. In this film, Julie plays an actress who dresses as a woman, and the image of Julie dressed in men's clothing has always been praised, setting a benchmark not only in the film, but also in the fashion industry.
Julie (right) in "Male and Female" in which a woman dresses as a man.
Unfortunately, in the 1990s, Julie's throat appeared abnormal, until 1997 after the tumor was cut, she temporarily said goodbye to the singing career, and the unsuccessful tumor removal surgery caused her vocal cords to be damaged.
Since then, Julie has still starred in works such as "The Princess Diary" and successfully created a group of elegant and confident mature female figures. Julie not only appeared in front of the stage, but also did a lot of behind-the-scenes work, in recent years, she dubbed a large number of animated films, such as "Shrek", "Despicable Me", etc., in her later years in various forms of film production.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to being a well-known actress and director, Julie is also a children's book author who has published a number of children's books, and she also published her autobiography Home: A Memoir of My Early Years in 2008. Jolie is a philanthropic passion, adopting two Vietnamese orphans and serving as a "Goodwill Ambassador" for the United Nations Women's Development Foundation.
Julie (left) in The Princess Diaries.
In fact, both inside and outside the play, Julie Andrews continues the image of warmth and kindness created in the films "Full of Joy" and "The Sound of Music". We can fully see her as the embodiment of the golden age of cinema, leaving in her a lot of traces of the filmmakers of the classic era, and we see in her the spirit of the era that highly praises innocence and kindness, maybe some old-school, but the classics are eternal.
□ Yu (Film Critic)
Beijing News Editor Wu Longzhen Proofreader Liu Jun