Queen Julie: Andrews returns as monarch in 'Shrek'
Julie Andrews has been Hollywood royalty for decades. Lately, she's had the parts to prove it with queenly roles in The Princess Diaries and Shrek films.Andrews -- who reprises her voice role in Shrek the Third as Queen Lillian, mother-in-law to Mike Myers' ogre and mom to Cameron Diaz's ogre princess -- is a pragmatic monarch.
Since throat surgery ruined the glorious singing voice of the star of Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria and other films, Andrews finds other ways to express herself, continuing to moonlight as a children's author and director.
Though she managed a subdued little musical number in 2004's The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Andrews said she has not recovered her singing voice in the 10 years since the surgery.
"No, sadly," Andrews said in an interview to promote Shrek the Third. "I'm not singing. My daughter, the one that I write with, said something so lovely. I was bemoaning the fact that I wasn't singing and how much I missed it. And she said, 'Mom, you've just found a different way of using your voice by writing.' It made me feel so much better. ...
"I do miss singing with an orchestra, the beauty of it all. I miss the music. But at least I am able to still contribute, which is lovely."
Andrews, 71, has referred to her talent as "my freak four-octave voice," which gave her an early start in show business in England. The daughter of music-hall performers, Andrews was singing on stage as a child and was still in her teens when she debuted on Broadway.
She quickly became a Broadway superstar as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and followed that musical as Guinevere in Camelot, though success in Hollywood initially was elusive.
Andrews' voice problems developed while she was performing in the Broadway production of Victor/Victoria in the mid-1990s. She underwent surgery to remove non-cancerous nodules, but the operation left her without her singing voice.
By then, Andrews had long since established herself as a children's author, a sidelight that became increasingly important with her singing career over. Her books include Mandy, Little Bo, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles and her Dumpy the Dump Truck tales.
Andrews and daughter Emma Walton Hamilton write together and oversee a collection of children's stories under Andrews' name that includes their own works, tales by others and books that had gone out of print.After another children's book, William Steig's Shrek!, became the basis for the 2001 animated hit, Andrews was brought in for 2004's Shrek 2 as the voice of Lillian, wife of the frog king Harold.
"We were thinking, OK, we need a queen who has really got it together but has got to have a sense of humor because of the world she lives in," said Shrek the Third producer Aron Warner. "Her husband's a frog, her daughter's an ogre. So we had to have someone we knew could laugh but could also carry that sort of regalness."
Though her singing career is behind her, Andrews does get to hum a tune in Shrek the Third. In a dizzy moment for Queen Lillian, she trills through a few bars of My Favorite Things, one of the songs Andrews belted out in The Sound of Music.
"It felt like a charmingly wicked thing to do," Andrews said.
Published: Thursday, May 17th, 2007
By: David Germain the associated press
