Julie Andrews is feeling practically perfect in every way.
After all, the Mary Poppins star—who had her 90th birthday on Oct. 1—is celebrating the start of the new decade by continuing one of her favorite activities: publishing books with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, whom she shares with ex-husband Tony Walton. The mother and daughter duo recently reissued their 2010 book The Great American Mousical about a troupe of theater-loving mice, this time illustrated by Tony, himself a famed costume and production designer.
As Julie told People in an interview published Oct. 27, she and Emma “just had such a ball writing it.”
For the Sound of Music actress—who has written 30 books with Emma, 62, over the past 25 years— getting to work with her daughter has helped them become even closer, noting that the two often finish “each other’s sentences.”
She also confessed that Emma handles all of the computer work, joking, “Bless her heart, she does [the typing] for me. Otherwise, we'd be here on the first book still.”
In addition to being able to collaborate with her loved ones, Julie—who is also mom to Amy Edwards and Joanna Edwards with late second husband Blake Edwards—has been finding joy in seeing kids fall in love with theater and seek out live performances through her stories.
"We hope that kids will come away curious about theater,” she shared, “and want to see a show, and want to go to their local theater, want to go to a musical, whatever it may be.”
And as Julie explained, she had the idea for the book way back in the 1990s.
"I was in Victor/Victoria on Broadway,” she recalled, “and my hairdresser came in—darling man—and he said, 'There's been a mouse discovered in the hairdressing department.’”
And when the Oscar winner asked him to set down a humane mouse trap, he broke it to her gently “that there are hundreds of mice beneath the stage.”
“A light bulb went off in my head when he said, 'That mouse probably came up to see all the stars, you know,’” Julie shared. “I came back and told Emma, 'We've got to write this story of a troupe of mice who watch everything up on the big stage, and then develop it for their own pleasure.’”
Over the years, the Bridgerton star has credited writing with helping her find a creative outlet following her 1997 throat surgery, which left her unable to continue singing professionally.
“I think I would go completely mad if I didn’t have some lovely thing to work on,” she told Forbes in 2023. “I think really since I had a bad surgery on my throat, I’ve just turned to this with Emma and it’s been such a joy. It has been very refreshing for me and reviving in a way, because of course, it was a very sad event.”
Despite the setback, the Hollywood icon is incredibly thankful for the career she has, which she credits “to great, good fortune and then a lot of hard work.”
“I mean, I’ve just been so really lucky in my career that the opportunities, the mentors—somehow being somewhere at the right moment,” Julie continued. “None of it was really planned—and so, things don’t just land on your desk every second but surprises do, and I just think nobody has been more fortunate than I’ve been.”
For a look at Julie’s life over the years, keep reading.
1951
1955
1957
1959
1963
1964
Mary Poppins
1965
The Sound of Music, 1965
1966
Thoroughly Modern Millie, 1967
1967
Star!, 1968
1971
1979
Victor/Victoria, 1982
1982
1983
1986
1993
2001
2004
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, 2004
2006
2010
2015
2019
2022
2023