Julie Andrews made her first public appearance in nearly three years in May 2026, appearing in a pre-recorded video message for the 7th World Parkinson’s Congress in Phoenix, Arizona. The 90-year-old actress, dressed in a pale blue shirt and seated in an armchair, addressed the audience as a longtime supporter of Parkinson’s research. She did not have Parkinson’s disease, but her return to the spotlight, after roughly three years of silence, prompted an outpouring of emotion from fans. Her previous major public appearance was in March 2023, at the Carol Burnett 90 Years of Laughter special.
Between then and the 2026 congress, she had stayed almost entirely out of view. For someone whose voice became one of the most recognizable in Hollywood history, that quiet period was long enough to stir widespread concern, and seeing her again, even in a recorded message, moved many viewers to tears. The emotional reaction is not hard to understand when her personal history is taken into account. Andrews, defined for decades by an extraordinary four-octave singing range, lost the ability to sing in June 1997.
She was in the middle of a Broadway run of Victor/Victoria when doctors found a benign lesion on her vocal cords. A routine procedure meant to remove it went wrong. She came out of surgery unable to sing, and the range that had powered songs like Do-Re-Mi and My Favorite Things was effectively gone. The damage was permanent, and the loss took a deep toll.
In her own words, she recalled telling her daughter how much she missed that part of her life. “God, I miss it. And I do. I mean, there’s nothing more beautiful than singing with a big, big orchestra.
” A surgeon named Steven Zeitels later removed scar tissue and improved her speaking voice, but her singing range had been cut to roughly one octave. Restoration was never possible. In 1999, she filed a malpractice lawsuit against the hospital, settling privately in 2000 with terms that were never made public. She never publicly attacked the doctors or the institution.
She simply moved on quietly. The loss has to be understood in context: her identity, career, and public image had been built on that voice, and one surgery erased it. Her personal losses have been equally significant. She married director Blake Edwards in 1969, after an earlier marriage to costume designer Tony Walton.
With Edwards, she formed a creative and personal partnership that lasted 41 years. He died on December 15, 2010, from complications of pneumonia, leaving her a widow at 74. She largely stepped back from mainstream film work after his death. Tony Walton, the father of her eldest daughter, Emma, died in March 2022.
Andrews had remained close to Walton even after their divorce, meaning she has now outlived both men who were deeply connected to her life and career. Her public image as the warm and proper Mary Poppins figure also masks a difficult childhood. In her 2008 memoir Home, she revealed that she was born from an affair and only learned who her real father was as a teenager. Her mother eventually married Ted Andrews, an entertainer and heavy drinker, who gave her singing lessons but also, as she wrote, made deeply uncomfortable advances toward her as a child.
Her mother battled alcoholism as well. The person who opened the door to her talent was also the person who caused serious harm in her early years. During World War II, she grew up in London under conditions of wartime poverty and family instability. By age 12, she was already performing professionally to help support her family, and at 13, she sang for King George VI.
The composed, graceful image she presented to the world later in life was something she built herself, from a childhood that offered her very little ease. Today, her life looks different from her Hollywood years. She lives quietly, spending most of her time in the Hamptons on Long Island, deliberately staying out of the spotlight. She has three daughters: Emma, from her marriage to Walton, and Amy and Joanna, whom she and Edwards adopted.
She is also a grandmother of nine and a great-grandmother. Writing has become a central part of her life in recent years. Since losing her singing voice, she has co-written around 30 children’s books with her daughter Emma over a period of about 25 years. In October 2025, they re-released their 2010 book The Great American Musical, this time with new illustrations by Tony Walton, completed before his death.
It stands as one of the last works he created. Her voice also continues to circulate in popular culture. Since 2020, she has been the narrator of Bridgerton on Netflix, voicing the sharp-tongued Lady Whistledown. In 2025, at age 89, she won an Emmy for the role.
Even at 90, she keeps working. There has been considerable public speculation about a possible Princess Diaries 3. The project is officially in development at Disney, with Anne Hathaway confirming the news in October 2024 and Adele Lim attached to direct. Andrews has cast doubt on whether she would return as Queen Clarice, pointing to how many years have passed.
Hathaway has said she would be willing to work around Andrews’s schedule, even suggesting a green screen setup if needed. The door is not fully closed, but nothing has been confirmed. Andrews has also been open about the gap between her public persona and who she really is. She has said the perfect, always proper image the world associates with her is not an accurate reflection of her character.
Those close to her describe her as resilient, focused on her children, grandchildren, and books. She survived a difficult childhood, lost her singing voice and found another creative outlet, and continued building after losing her husband of more than four decades. At 90, her return in that video message was brief, but it was enough to show that she is still present, still creating, and still very much herself.
