Why is Julie Andrews not considered a peer of Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, and Helen Mirren?

Because she has never given a performance equal to any of them.

You want Julie to compete for old lady dramas when her forte is musical comedy? Or are you wondering why Helen Mirren and Judy Dench weren’t in the running for My Fair Lady, Camelot and Mary Poppins?

She was never a good actress. She could sing and sort of dance.

Julie Andrews was more of a movie star, not really an actress. And now she's pretty much neither. I guess you could call her a legacy star now. All of her best roles were 40+ years ago.

Has Julie ever admitted to copying Kay Kendall's speaking voice? She sounds just like her.

Well, Vanessa did do "Camelot," so there's that...

Julie is likable and she'll always be popular because of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, but she never really showed much range after that aside from showing some titty in SOB and some humour in Victor/Victoria.

Redgrave et al could play villains. Did Julie ever play one? Julie played it too safe or boring.

[quote]She was never a good actress. She could sing and sort of dance.

She was nominated 3 times for an acting Oscar. She wasn't a great actress, I'll give you that, but she was a good one.

She was a great singer in her prime though.

I was impressed with her acting in That's Life. She cries in the climax giving a speech about how she is going to leave her husband.

I’m thought she was decent in Paddy Chayefsky’s The Americanization of Emily, though it was James Garner who stole the movie.

Prime Julie

Julie Andrews is a cunt, and she can't act.

Pauline Kael said it for all time: she had the impersonal niceness of an airplane stewardess.

Raspberries for Pauline

Some clever director had better hurry up and cast Julie in a villain role. Just a small one, it would get a lot of attention.

[quote]Because she has never given a performance equal to any of them.

Oh, dear.

"Theirs," perhaps...

Unlike movies with Judi / Maggie / Helen / Vanessa, you never forget you're watching Julie Andrews in any movie she's in.

[quote]Pauline Kael said it for all time: she had the impersonal niceness of an airplane stewardess.

Ooo, I love Julie, but that's a burn if ever I heard one.

And probably an apt one too. Again, love Julie, but it's always been very clear to me she's an extremely guarded person who goes to great lengths to curate her image.

She's always polite and pleasant, but it's always at an arm's distance. I don't think she's fake, per se. I think she's a genuinely nice person, but she's a control freak who protects herself by keeping most people at bay.

Probably the only people who know (or knew) the "real" Julie is her daughter, Emma, Carol Burnett and Blake.

And Dame Julie will still be remembered 50 years from now because of those magical, wonderful movies.

The others? Not so much. Maybe Maggie Smith with the Potter films.

She’s definitely prettier than the others though Vanessa was pretty as a young actress.

She knows why.

She left and went to America.

[quote]And Dame Julie will still be remembered 50 years from now because of those magical, wonderful movies.

Shrek? The Princess Diaries? The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?

She's never been in a single good film, just treacle and musicals and shit films.

Julie Andrews is a movie star, OP. And legendary and iconic. The others are just actresses audience doesn't care about.

And lest you forget, Americans love treacle and musicals and shit films.

I’ve never seen Shrek or that pants movie. The Princess Diaries movies are fine, but obviously forgettable.

I think I remember reading on DL that a fan of hers got a chance to stay with Julie and her husband. By the time he left however, whatever view he had of her was completely shattered. I guess in real life she was very different from the characters she played, but the poster didn't go into specifics.

Why? Because Julie Andrews hates Barbra Streisand's singing voice!

R26 Well they were both gay, maybe that’s what he referred to.

R8 She WON an Oscar for Mary Poppins

She deserved that "Mary Poppins" Oscar: fun star performance, lovely singing.

Julie and Blake Edwards had a great marriage.

Julie and Blake were close friends with Christopher Plummer, Carol Burnett, Jack Lemmon, David Niven, Robert Loggia, and Lee Remick. These are people who were never in the tabloids.

Andrews knows good music

Didn't Rachel York imply that Julie hit on her during their run in V/V?

[quote] love Julie, but it's always been very clear to me she's an extremely guarded person

Between a childhood filled with family mental illness out of Dickens and that whole business about her being a big ole lesbian, guarded sounds about right.

Her memoir unsettled me and she didn't reveal that much in it.

I’ve never seen Sound of Music. Just short clips. To my eternal delight it boggles & annoys most of my friends.

[quote] Judy Dench

Her first name is four letters and still, so many fail at getting all four correct.

R31- Carol Burnett was in the tabloids. She sued The National Enquirer and won.

I found it sad a performer as classy as she was would let her creepy husband finagle her into doing nude scenes, she was above all that.

Because she's LESBIAN silly.

Maybe she can't match the other 4 in acting but they couldn't sing like her.

R38 I thought she wanted to do the nude scene

She is like Angela Lansbury. No matter how hard they work, they will always be known for being Mary Poppins/Jessica Fletcher and not taken seriously as an actress.

Keep in mind Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave never won the Oscar for Best Actress. Julie did.

R17 you're right. She has the Jerry Seinfeld problem. A good actor but it's hard for her to disappear in character.

AND Blake Edwards was also batshit crazy.

[quote] Because she's LESBIAN silly.

THIS!!

She was also Carol Burnett's lover for years.

"Chum"

Because she showed her tits in SOB

[quote]Unlike movies with Judi / Maggie / Helen / Vanessa, you never forget you're watching Julie Andrews in any movie she's in.

This doesn't necessarily contradict what you're saying, but I do think it you watch back-to-back clips of Julie in MARY POPPINS and THE SOUND OF MUSIC, for example, she creates two very different characterizations.

[quote] I thought she wanted to do the nude scene

HA HA HAAAAA!

It could be that Julie looked at her marriage as more of a professional partnership. After much success, her movies from 1968 were big bombs and she was off to television. With a few exceptions, Blake Edwards was the only director who would cast her. This kind of arrangement is not uncommon.

R50, I'm not sure it's accurate to say that "with a few exceptions, Blake Edwards was the only director who would cast her." Julie had been one of the biggest movie stars in the world from roughly 1964 to 1967, and despite the huge flops of STAR! and DARLING LILI, I'm pretty sure there were a lot of people who would have cast her in roles that she would have been well-suited for -- rather than roles for which she was not well-suited, like the ones she played in those films. Also, I think she was burned out after those two flops, and it was at least partly her decision to lay low and not do any films for a while.

Judi with an I

Julie turned down the film of Camelot. Was she still pissed at Jack Warner? I mean why Vanessa Redgrave??

Different lanes, OP...

Julie's TV variety show from early 70s was a missed opportunity.

Anyone enjoy the episodes available on Youtube?

The canned applause/ laffs are a nightmare. She wouldn't do a live show?

Julie was a musical comedy star and a movie star. The others are trained actresses who wanted to be on the stage. It's too entirely different things.

Yes, Julie did do some serious stage work in London (Duet for One), and Maggie Smith and Judi Dench have occasional done musical theater work in film and elsewhere, but they really are differently trained.

It would be like comparing Bernadette Peters to Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange and Glenn Close. Bernadette was just made for different things than those other women.

It's like comparing Carol Burnett and Jane Fonda, r56.

R20 Socwas Helen.

Did Maggie or Judi ever bare their breasts on camera? the other three women did.

Julie will be remembered, but in a Howard Keel sort of way, for a couple of musicals, while the others are titans in the history of acting.

^^Howard Keel never won an Oscar, nor was he the biggest box office star in the USA for several years, nor was he in two films that generations of children watched on TV and then VHS and DVD.

The analogy is ridiculous.

r59-

[quote]"My costume was picked fresh every morning." #DameJudiDench describes her outfit for Sir Peter Hall's Midsummer Night's Dream in 1968.

R42, The Manchurian Candidate would like some words with you.

Agreed, R61.

R53 Richard Burton turned the movie down. So did Andrews, Robert Goulet, Robert Coote, John Cullum, and Roddy McDowell.

^^Robert Goulet, Robert Goulet! Oh my GOD, Robert GOULET!

[quote]She left and went to America.

I remember when Julie was made a dame in 2000, she remarked to the press that she was pleasantly surprised because she had resided in the USA for most of her adult life, raised her children there, and the bulk of her film/TV/stage work was in America.

Incidentally, Elizabeth Taylor was made a dame that same year, too, which made some people scratch their heads, because though London-born, her parents were American expatriates who moved back to the USA at the outbreak of WWII, when Liz was around 8 years old. Later in her thirties, she renounced her U.S. citizenship upon marrying Richard Burton... but then got it back after their divorce.

[quote]I found it sad a performer as classy as she was would let her creepy husband finagle her into doing nude scenes, she was above all that.

What's sadder to me is that she apparently allowed Blake to talk her into coming back to broadway for Victor/Victoria--something she was extremely hesitant to do because of the strain it would put on her voice.

I remember watching an interview she gave when they were in rehearsals, and it looked clear to me she was uncomfortable and worried about her singing voice being able to withstand such a grueling schedule.

And she was right to worry. Julie's singing voice, by that point, was well past its prime. She did her best to protect it and keep it healthy, but a lifetime of singing since she was a little girl naturally took its toll and her vocal range and prowess diminished with age.

She could still sing, but not like she did on broadway when she was 20. Yet despite that, she went ahead and committed to the show, at Blake's unrelenting insistence in my opinion as he was the director and needed a pet project.

And sure enough, not long into the show, Julie developed severe vocal strain (which she mistook for non-cancerous nodules), and went in for that infamous surgery which ultimately took her singing voice and ended her singing career.

I always felt Blake selfishly pushed her into doing the show when Julie knew (in her heart of hearts) her voice couldn't hold up anymore. I think she deeply respected him as an artist and deferred to him a lot when it came to managing her career in later years.

Unfortunately, she should have listened to her instincts on this one. The cost of giving into Blake on this cost her a lot.

Why can’t Julie say NO?

R68, I think all of that happened pretty much exactly as you described, and it is indeed very, very sad.

[quote]Julie is likable and she'll always be popular because of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music

Also THE PRINCESS DIARIES.

That is one of many Gen Z girls/gays favorite childhood movies.

[quote]Why is Julie Andrews not considered a peer of Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, and Helen Mirren?

Because she only peed on Carol Burnett and one of the Trapp daughters from the movie.

She never was a peer of the others. They wouldn't let her.