Home work A memoir of my Hollywood years

Julie Andrews

Book - 2019

"With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films--Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards.... The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations." -- Amazon

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
New York : Hachette Books 2019.
Language
English
Main Author
Julie Andrews (author)
Other Authors
Emma Walton Hamilton (author)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
Includes index.
Physical Description
340 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780316349253
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

It's been awhile since Andrews' first memoir, Home (2008), so she begins her second warm, graceful, and candid look back with a crisply orienting recap of her life in England as a child performer who dropped out of school to support her dysfunctional family. Her struggle to balance her longing for a stable home life with her devotion to her work underlies her phenomenal artistic evolution. Andrews begins here with her first triumph on Broadway and Walt Disney whisking her off to Hollywood, knowing that he had found the perfect Mary Poppins. A journal keeper and children's-book author as well as a gloriously gifted singer and actor, Andrews, along with her steadfast coauthor, tells captivating, sweetly self-deprecating, funny, and painful behind-the-scenes tales about her many movie adventures and frankly recounts the end of her first marriage and the high drama of her second as she and renowned director Blake Edwards collaborated cinematically and in creating a complicated extended family often beset with traumas. This deeply pleasurable and forthright chronicle illuminates the myriad reasons home work has such profound meaning for artist and humanitarian Andrews. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Andrews' star power is one lure; the other is her treasury of delectable Hollywood revelations.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Singer and actor Andrews, writing with her daughter Hamilton, offers a sincere and inspiring account of her life, focusing on her Hollywood years beginning in 1962. After a brief recap of her youth in England (covered in more detail in her earlier memoir, Home), Andrews recounts her first movie role in Mary Poppins and her experiences in the Disney studios, where Walt Disney himself offered "fatherly kindness" to the young actress, who was newly a mother and married to her childhood sweetheart, set and costume designer Tony Walton. Her next big role--again, as a nanny--was in The Sound of Music. Writing of her role in 1966's Torn Curtain, she shares behind-the-scenes tales of Alfred Hitchcock's wry humor, as well as shooting an "anything but dreamy" love scene with Paul Newman. Her marriage collapsed from the strain of work and travel, but in 1969 she met the mercurial producer Blake Edwards at a traffic intersection on Sunset Boulevard. Andrews shares tales of her colleagues (Peter Sellers was testy on The Pink Panther set; Dudley Moore charmed her in Ten) as well as her efforts to stabilize her marriage to Edwards (they remained married until his death in 2010). This charming account of Andrews's professional and personal life will no doubt serve to make the venerated performer all the more beloved. (Oct.)

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