Home Work
A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
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4.2 • 166 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In this New York Times bestselling follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews reflects on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria.
In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage.
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.
Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Like her iconic Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews might just be perfect in every way. The actress’ follow-up to 2008’s Home—which looked at her pre-fame years—starts with her arrival in Hollywood. It continues her remarkable rags-to-riches story, charting the personal and professional highs and lows she’s experienced during her movie career. Fans of Andrews’ beloved films, from The Sound of Music to Victor/Victoria, will delight in her fond behind-the-scenes reminiscences. She also writes about personal relationships, especially with her late husband, Blake Edwards, with honesty and dignity. Home Work isn’t a dirt-dishing, score-settling memoir, but that’s not what we’d ever expect—or want—from Andrews.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Julie’s Surprising Life
Thank you, Miss Andrews, for sharing your personal and professional triumphs, challenges, and things you perhaps wished had gone another way.
HomeWork
Julie Andrews remains gracious and humble as she gives the inside story of what it is like to be part of Hollywood royalty and a private person at the same time. She is candid about the challenges, heartbreaks and joys. Felt a part of her friends and family. Couldn’t stop reading!
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