Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years

To those who complained about the "quality control" and the uneven pages:Did you know...*the first draft of the new book had over 600 pages.*the uneven edges of the new book is done on purpose? The style is called 'deckled edges' and it dates back to a time when books were hand cut, and it gives it a more “exclusive” feel and appearance. Julie and Emma loved this and wanted this for this new book.Excellent book ... taken from Julie's many diaries. The audiobook, read by Dame Julie herself is delightful.

I bought and am reading this book for my grandmother who has dementia and can no longer enjoy things like this. Every time I curled up on her couch we would watch the sound of music or Mary Poppins. I wish that I could gift this to her and because that horrible disease took away her mind, I will enjoy and read it for her. Thank you Julie Andrews and my grandmother for giving me all the nostalgia and memories. I will surely pass it on to my own children. If you are a fan of course you will like having this book, but to me it’s much more than just being a fan.

Home Work arrived yesterday, in book form, but I couldn’t wait and so I started listening to the (amazing) áudio yesterday morning.I’m a huge Julie fan, so the history and stories are familiar to me. While Julie is an intensely private and loyal woman, this new memoir is beautifully written and as candid as, well, we’ll ever see from Julie. If there’s a caveat, it would be that she skips over some things (such as Duet For One, her greatest film performance: though the book does tell you up front that this autobiography is of her “Hollywood Years”).I cannot urge you enough to listen to the audio version - not only do you get Julie’s voice for 13 hours plus, but you’ll have an appreciation for the writing that is perhaps missed on the page aloneTotally engrossing. We can all hope for a third to come.

The world is a better place because you were in it. I heard your beautiful voice for the first time when I was fifteen. I travelled to Phoenix with friends especially to see "The Sound of Music". That movie and your voice was magical.Thank you so much for sharing your voice with the world.I read "Home Work" in a day. Your love of family is central to your story. I am not surprised. Take care, Dame Julie Andrews. You deserve a rest. :)

While the first half is interesting, the second half really gets rollicking... I honestly can’t Imaginnnne the sheer logistics of her life, especially the life she led in the 70’s with Blake Edwards, five children, assorted animals, international residencies, ailing parents and a booming career. Yes, the choices they willingly made led to the happy (and at times, not so happy) chaos, and she fully agrees that they chose that life - yet, they somehow careened through it all as a family and made it work. I’m astonished at the aplomb and resourcefulness they seemed meet every curveball with, and while her natural reserve does seem prevent her from letting the reader fully in on the more difficult areas, you sure get the idea. Her kind heart really shines through when writing about the lives of those struggling so horribly after the Vietnam War, and, surprisingly, she lets you feel a bit of what it was like living with a wildly creative man who’s moods seemed to swing from light to dark a great deal. I wasn’t sure at first, but going into that second half, I truly could not put the book down. As an aside, I once treated myself to a haircut from Rula at Michaeljohn Salon, and in the parking lot below, there was room for only one car at a time to go up or down. While paying at the booth, I stood and watched as a ratty, ancient, smoke-spewing beater tried to come down the ramp and encountered a gorgeous, silver, two-seater Mercedes sports car trying to go up. Without a fuss, that Mercedes immediately backed up to one side and kindly waited, letting the poor guy pass. The license plate on that beautiful car? JAE. She really is That nice. ❤️

Excited to read this as I just received it today! I love how the pages are cut, easier to turn pages! If you're a Julie Andrews lover, buy this NOW!

The quality on this book is atrocious. As you can see from the photos the pages are all cut to different sizes & not put in evenly, pages stick out & are already crumpling & folding over. Hopefully the binding isn't as poorly done as as the cutting or the pages will also fall out. Amazon should stop selling this piece of trash until the publisher can put out a decent product.

There's very little "Hollywood" in this supposed "Hollywood Years" memoire. Instead you get endless repetitions of how arduous and "exhausting" supporting seemingly endless family members and in-laws is and moving between LA, London, Switzerland and Malibu is.Of the movies hereself and the stars she worked with, there's just an odd sentence or two. Paul Newman in Torn Curtain? Julie loved his blue eyes (that's it. Really! That's it!), Dick Van Dyke - "a nice man" (again, that's it) etc etc. We get the same two tired stories about "The Sound of Music" (the "I almost got flattened by the downdraft from the helicopter in the opening shot" and "They told me the little girl couldn't swim so I had to save her" in the boat sequence) that we've heard a million times before and nothing else. It's as if Andrews has no recollection whatsoever of the movies she worked on, but endless details of the "exhausting" household chores she had to perform (in spite of having a seemingly never-ending changing staff of nannies to look after the kids).The only waspishness or negativity is statements of the bleeding obvious (Rex Harrison was difficult, James Aubrey was known as "the smiling cobra", Peter Sellars became a drunken depressive who caused problems on film sets) aside from endless sniping about not having been chosen to play the lead in the film version of "My Fair Lady" which soon gets tiresome.

Home Work: A Memoir Of My Hollywood Years, the second memoir by the great Dame Julie Andrews, is an insightful, entertaining and utterly fabulous look into the life of one of Hollywood’s true greats. Worth not only reading once, but again and again!

This is an extremely well-written memoir, coauthored by Julie Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. The writing style is intimate and revealing, whilst at the same time slightly reserved; you are trusted with a lot, but there is the sense that not everything has been revealed, which is as it should be.Julie comes across as a thoroughly lovely lady and became close friends with many of her costars, rarely finding anyone difficult to work with or herself losing her temper. I grew up watching her films on TV, so it was particularly interesting to read her accounts of my favourites: The Tamarind Seed, Hawaii and the favourite of many a Christmas viewing, The Sound of Music. Of course, it all starts with Mary Poppins, which was where everything started to take off. A small number of photographs are included for illustration.This is pleasant, easy reading about a charming actress. I couldn’t put it down once I had started and it offers an insight into Hollywood by a thoroughly nice lady.

What an incredible read! Honest, funny, heartbreaking and insightful. Just goes to show that even the happiest and most inspirational people go through huge struggles and pull through. Am in love with this book!

Julie Andrews was in my childhood my favourite star like a lot of people of my generation I have seen the sound of music many times. The book is informative about the era she was a Hollywood favourite on film and TV , her family at times seem to suffer for her and her husband's need for fame. I found this book or memoir a little self indulgent which is only to be expected her days in the studio system working for Walt Disney are interesting but her constant carping on about having no money then buying her parents a home and herself and husband a place in Switzerland. Miss Andrews idea of been poor is different from most. She works constantly which is good in the business that is notorious for been unemployed. Her first daughter is pushed from pillow to post between her and her first husband, she then goes on to adopt two more, it is clear that today she would have had a fight on her hands. The parts of the book I did enjoy were the anecdotes on set where she writes about her co stars Plummer a private man James Gardner a true professional and gentlemen she briefly writes about her time on stage but most of that is in the previous book. The book has many photographs of the stars of the day and family shots I read this book with interest it's not a page Turner by no means. In conclusion Miss Andrews is no longer the English rose she was portrayed as but a Hollywood star of yesterday with all the trappings. She needs a a wake up call if she thinks been poor is not renting villas on the Mediterranean and letting the nanny go.