Julie Andrews, undisputed icon for the LGBT community, will be the recipient of the Golden Lion for Career Achievement at the 76. Venice International Film Festival. Francesco Gangemi took inspiration from her and the awesome The Sound of Music for Queer Lion 2019 official image
No need to beat around the bush: no one like her.
A career half a century long, marked by one Oscar, five Golden Globes, two Emmys, three Grammys, two BAFTAs, one People’s Choice Award, one Screen Actors Guild, one David di Donatello, as well as three Tony nominations (one refused) and the honours of Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and the Kennedy Center Honor.
After years of success on Broadway with her powerful, 4-octave voice and a background as a child prodigy, right from the very beginning, her screen debut already is a iconic one.
Her star becomes a blinding one thanks her first role being the role of a lifetime: that of the independent, unconventional, singing nanny Mary Poppins. An indelible iconic figure in the history of cinema as peculiar as are her skills to communicate with robins.
Less than a year goes by, and she is joined by Maria, the feminist novice of The Sound of Music. Another icon ready to be placed in the big book of the Seventh Art.
In 1982, under the direction of the genius of Blake Edwards, she morphs into a woman pretending to be a gay man performing as a cross-dresser, on the Parisian scene of the thirties, in Victor Victoria; and this, after crossing path, among others, with Alfred Hitchcock (Torn Curtain) and Robert Wise once again (Star!).
In 2001, she becomes a Queen for The Princess Diaries, and does it once again in 2004 for The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. Her last appearance (and just the 22nd in 50 years) on te big screen dates back to 9 years ago with Tooth Fairy. In between, hundreds of awards, television and theater shows, books for children, and most of all her love for Blake Edwards, her late second husband who died in 2010.
Along with Judy Garland, Cher and Barbra Streisand she is perhaps the greatest gay icon in the history of cinema.
