Hollywood’s hills were alive with the sound of music this week in celebration of Julie Andrews and her six-decade movie career.
The “Mary Poppins” actor received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award Thursday night in Los Angeles. The ceremony took place at the Dolby Theatre after a two-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cynthia Erivo honored Andrews with a musical performance, while actors Hector Elizondo and Anne Hathaway ― who appeared alongside Andrews in “The Princess Diaries” ― also offered tributes. The evening’s most buzzed-about moment, however, was an onstage reunion of Andrews’ “Sound of Music” co-stars.
Angela Cartwright, Duane Chase, Nicholas Hammond, Kym Karath and Debbie Turner ― who portrayed five of the seven von Trapp children in the 1965 movie musical ― led the crowd in a singalong of “Do-Re-Mi” from the film.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg captured the heartwarming moment in a video posted to social media.
Andrews’ iconic performance as Maria von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” came just one year after she won an Academy Award for “Mary Poppins.” The movie depicts the real-life von Trapp family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Austria shortly before World War II. It received five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Robert Wise.
Sadly, not every member of the onscreen von Trapp family was in attendance. Christopher Plummer, who played Captain Georg von Trapp, died last year at age 91. Actors Charmian Carr and Heather Menzies, who portrayed Liesl and Louisa von Trapp, died in 2016 and 2017 at ages 73 and 68, respectively.
Andrews has been enjoying a period of heightened visibility lately, thanks in part to Netflix’s “Bridgerton,” which she narrates as the intriguingly haughty Lady Whistledown. This summer, she provides the voice of Marlena Gru in “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
Speaking to “Entertainment Tonight” Thursday, Andrews said she loves voice-over roles, joking, “I don’t have to get into makeup and hair in the morning if I don’t want to.”
