Andrews finds new voice in kids’ books
No longer able to enjoy one of her favourite things, Julie Andrews turned to writing children’s books after a throat surgery she alleged was botched and left her unable to sing.
“When I woke up from an operation to remove a cyst on my vocal cord, my singing voice was gone,” the 84-year-old told AARP’s The Magazine for its October/November 2019 issue. “I went into a depression. It felt like I’d lost my identity.”
The musical theatre legend first noticed her voice was hoarse while performing on Broadway in 1997, and underwent a throat operation to remove “non-cancerous nodules” at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital shortly after.
She alleges the surgery left her speaking voice raspy and caused permanent damage to her singing voice.
Though she was told it should return to normal in six weeks, she says her voice never recovered. In 1999, Andrews sued the doctors who’d operated on her for malpractice, settling for an undisclosed amount in September 2000.
The British actress, who showcased her wide singing range in such musical classics as Mary Poppins in 1964 and The Sound of Music in 1965, has had several unsuccessful operations to restore her voice.
“But by good fortune that’s when my daughter Emma and I had been asked to write books for kids,” Andrews told AARP. “So along came a brand-new career in my mid-60s. Boy, was that a lovely surprise.”
Andrews’ latest project is narrating the upcoming Netflix series Bridgerton, based on the romance novels of Julia Quinn, which follow an upper-class family in Regency-era London of the early 1800s.
Her first memoir, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, was published in 2008 and chronicled her childhood in Britain’s music hall circuit leading up to winning the role of Mary Poppins.
Her second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, comes out Oct. 15, picking up in 1963 where the first book left off.
“But do I miss singing,” Andrews said. “Yes. I really do.”