Julie Andrews Doesn't Feel A Day Over 50 (But She Does Have One Complaint)

Slowing down at an older age looks different for people in the entertainment industry. After several decades of making live-action movies, Julie Andrews announced that she stopped acting on screen at 90 years old. However, Andrews told Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the "Wiser Than Me" podcast that she feels decades younger than she is. "Well, I probably feel like in my 50s," she said in 2024. "Honest to God, as long as the brain holds out, I'm doing okay." 

But the "Mary Poppins" and "Sound of Music" actor didn't shy away from issues with her physical well-being as an 88-year-old at the time. She said, "I want to do more, and I want to exercise more and all of those things. But with the accompanying sort of aches and pains, I b***h a lot about it." That same year, Andrews told Yahoo Life, "I have all my life worked out first thing in the morning or something like that — a little less so these days." Even if she doesn't stay as physically active as she used to, her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton mentioned that Andrews' curiosity makes her energetic, too. "She stays very interested and very curious about creativity," Walton Hamilton told the outlet. That curious and creative spirit seems to have inspired Andrews to write children's books with Walton Hamilton since 2000 and work as a voice actor.

When her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton credited her curiosity for keeping her youthful, Julie Andrews had to agree. But, for Andrews, curiosity has a more important purpose than feeling young. She told People in 2017 that she would advise her younger self to stay curious. "What I know now is that there's always something more to learn, because you never stop really," she said. The "Princess Diaries" actor added that she thought time could be wasted in her youth, which is far from the truth she lives now. "Nothing you do in life is wasted," Andrews said. "I used to travel endlessly around — even when I was a child performer — and think, 'What is this doing for me?' I have found so many ways to employ what I observed in those days and incorporate it now."

Curiosity also helped her persevere through the devastating loss of her singing voice after undergoing throat surgery in the '90s. Andrews told CBS News about a poignant conversation she had with Walton Hamilton that changed her outlook. "I was bemoaning my fate to Emma, and she said, "Oh, Mum, you've just found another way of sharing your voice,'" Andrews recalled. The mother-daughter duo has collaborated on more than 35 children's books ever since. In 2024, they told Today that making a story together is easygoing, even on the rare occasions when have different opinions. Andrews said, "We might debate something, but when it clicks for one or the other of us, and we see the sense of it, we go in that direction and it's actually very pleasurable."