Julie Andrews

The one and only. :-)

You'd have to be a sour soul not to like Julie Andrews. (Yes, Joe Queenan, I'm talking about you!)  The British actress and singer has long been a favorite entertainer, particularly among American audiences.  After her performances in classic sixties movies such as The Americanization of Emily, Mary Poppins, and The Sound of Music (in which she played Maria von Trapp), how could she not be?

In the seventies and eighties, she made more serious and adult films (not always one and the same) such as The Tamarind Seed (1974) and, under the direction of her husband, the late Blake Edwards, 10 (1979); the controversial Hollywood-parodying 1981 film S.O.B. (in which she exposed her breasts as a way of spoofing her own squeaky-clean image), and: 1982's Victor/Victoria, in which she played a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.  (Got that?) Victor/Victoria re-teamed her with James Garner, with whom she appeared in The Americanization of Emily.

Thanks to her role as Queen Clarisse Renaldi in the Princess Diaries movies (bringing her back to her wholesome image and endearing her to a new generation of fans), Julie Andrews remains a quintessential star of the ages. :-)