The Early Life of Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews may seem like a princess, born with a silver spoon in her mouth but this was not the case at all. Julie Andrews was named Julia Elizabeth Wells on her certificate. She was born on 1 October 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England to Barbara Wells. Though Barbara was married to a Ted Wells, Julie Andrews was the result of an affair with a family friend.

During World War II, the couple did their own thing. While Ted Wells assisted with evacuating children to Surrey during the Blitz, Barbara joined a Ted Andrews in entertaining the troops. The couple got divorced and Barbara married Ted Andrews.

Initially Julie Andrews lived with her father and brother, John, but was sent to live with her mother in 1940 as Ted felt Barbara would be able to provide the financial and emotional support to encourage Julie Andrews’ already burgeoning talents. In an autobiography published in 2008, Home, Julie Andrews said that she disliked it that her mother suggested it would be more appropriate to refer to her stepfather as “Pop” when she had become used to calling him Uncle Ted.

In Home, Julie Andrews also said that her new family was “very poor and we lived in a bad slum area of London.” She also denotes this time as a “very black period in my life.” This might have been because Ted Andres was an alcoholic who tried to get into Julie Andrews’s bed. So Julie Andrews put a lock on her door. Things started to look up when Ted and Barbara Andrews’s stage career started getting a measure of success and the family was able to improve residences. They initially moved to Beckenham and then to Walton-on-Thames. At Walton, the Andrews lived in The Old Meuse, proof of their step up in life as it was the same house where Julie Andrews maternal grandmother had once served as a maid.

But the move to the Andrew’s family was not all bad. Her stepfather Ted paid for lessons for her. Julie Andrews first got lesson at the Cone-Ripman School which was an independent arts educational school in London. She next went to a famous concert soprano and voice instructor named Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen. Speaking of her teacher, Julie Andrews says, “She had an enormous influence on me. She was my third mother – I’ve got more mothers and fathers than anyone in the world.”

While her most famous performances are in My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews also has a successful writing career and has authored books such as The Very Fairy Princess, Julie Andrews’ Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies, Little Bo in Italy: The Continued Adventures of Bonnie Boadicea and The Great American Mousical (Julie Andrews Collection), to name a few.