Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, (born Julia Elizabeth Wells on 1 October 1935) is a British film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People’s Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours. Andrews was a former British child actress and singer who made her Broadway debut in 1954 with The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in other musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, and in musical films such as Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965): the roles for which she is still best known. Her voice spanned four octaves until it was damaged by a throat operation in 1998.

Andrews had a major revival of her film career in the 2000s, in family films such as The Princess Diaries (2001), its sequel The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), and the Shrek animated films (2004–2007). In 2005 Andrews revisited her first Broadway success, this time as a stage director, with a revival of The Boy Friend at a theatre in Connecticut.

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