Actress Julie Andrews dressed as Mary Poppins. Photo / File
Actress Julie Andrews dressed as Mary Poppins. Photo / File
Dame Julie Andrews has revealed that she needed therapy following the success of Mary Poppins.
She even locked away the best actress Oscar she won for portraying the magical nanny in her first Hollywood film in 1964.
The 84-year-old said: "l kept the Oscar in the attic for a very long time because I thought I'd been given it as a 'Welcome to Hollywood' and I didn't feel worthy of it."
On The Graham Norton Show last night, she added: "So much early success sent me into therapy and analysis. I learnt you have to do it right and honour the films you are making. It's a huge gift, but a lot of obligation."
Previously Dame Julie has said that therapy "saved my life" after her first marriage to Tony Walton broke up "and my head was so full of clutter and garbage".
The Sound Of Music star also told Norton that she was "very lucky" not to have had any unpleasant episodes with men in her career thanks to her second marriage to movie director Blake Edwards.
Actress Julie Andrews in a scene from Mary Poppins. Photo / Getty Images
"I married soon after arriving in Hollywood and it protected me from ever getting into that predicament," she said.
At the Venice Film Festival in September, Dame Julie admitted she had a miserable time filming the beginning of The Sound Of Music in a mountain meadow in Germany.
"It was so beautiful there... but it rained, rained, rained," she said. The actress told how the camera was mounted on a helicopter and she was knocked flat several times by the down draught from the rotor blades.
BREADWINNER WHO SANG ON A BEER CRATE
Born Julia Elizabeth Wells in 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, to two teachers, Julie had an impressive four-octave singing voice which was soon put to profitable use — her mother left her father for a Canadian tenor, Ted Andrews, whom Julie's mother accompanied on piano.
A young Julie Andrews performs with the singing puppet Archie Andrews. Photo / Getty Images
Standing on a beer crate to reach the microphone, Julie joined the family vaudeville act when she was nine.
On a summer tour in Blackpool, she noticed Ted, now her stepfather, was drinking heavily. Her mother soon followed suit.
Andrews, who never had time for much formal education, was 15 when she discovered her biological father was a family friend with whom her mother had had an affair.
Ted Andrews tried twice, when drunk, to get into bed with her. She prudently fitted a lock to her bedroom door.
Starring roles in the West End meant Andrews was the family's main breadwinner when she was in her teens and able to buy the family home for them.
