Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (Order of the British Empire) (n�e Wells; 1 October 1935) is an English (England) film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, Peoples Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award (Academy Awards) honours. Andrews was a former British child actress and singer who made her Broadway (Broadway theatre) debut in 1954 with The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in other musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot (Camelot (musical)), and in musical films such as Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins (film)) (1964) and The Sound of Music (The Sound of Music (film)) (1965): the roles for which she is still best-known. Her voice spanned four octaves until it was damaged by a throat operation in 1997.

Andrews had a major revival of her film career in the 2000s in family films such as The Princess Diaries (The Princess Diaries (film)) (2001), its sequel The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), and the Shrek animated films (2004-2007). In 2003 Andrews revisited her first Broadway success, this time as a stage director, with a revival of The Boy Friend at the Bay Street Theatre, Sag Harbor, New York (and later at the Goodspeed Opera House, in East Haddam, Connecticut in 2005).

Andrews is also an author of childrens books, and in 2008 published an autobiography, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.