Julie Andrews Opens Seventh World Parkinson's Congress in Rare Video
julie andrews opened the seventh World Parkinson's Congress over the weekend with a rare video message, a brief return to public view from the 90-year-old actress and singer. She used the appearance to put her name behind a global effort focused on finding a cure for Parkinson's disease.
“Good evening, everyone, I'm Julie Andrews, and I'm pleased to welcome you to the seventh World Parkinson's Congress,” she said in the video shared by the World Parkinson Coalition on YouTube. Andrews also told attendees, “Your participation is invaluable as we seek to find a cure to this terrible disease,” and added, “I know well how devastating it can be.”
World Parkinson's Congress opening
The video showed Andrews seated in a white chair by a window, wearing a cozy gray sweatshirt over a white turtleneck with gold earrings and a long gold necklace. The appearance was a quiet one, but it put one of the entertainment industry's most recognizable figures in front of a scientific conference built around a disease that has shaped many public and private lives.
“May we all become a beacon of light to stop it in its tracks. Count me in as a red thread. Thank you,” Andrews said at the end of the message. The line gave the conference an unusually direct celebrity endorsement, not as promotion for a project, but as a plea for participation in a medical effort.
Julie Andrews and the spotlight
The appearance was rare for Andrews, who has had a 70-plus-year career and is known for The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, The Princess Diaries, and Bridgerton. That same public profile gave the congress a level of attention a typical opening speech would not have reached on its own.
She has also stayed active with new work away from the conference circuit. Andrews announced a children's book titled Shy with her eldest daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and the book is scheduled to arrive on August 11 in the US and Canada.
Emma Walton Hamilton's book
Andrews and Hamilton have created several children's books together, including The Very Fairy Princess series, Waiting in the Wings, and Julie Andrews' Collection of Poems, Songs and Lullabies. The writing partnership keeps her presence visible even when she is not making many public appearances, and it gives this latest video a narrower but sharper purpose: support for a cause she chose to name directly.
Andrews married set designer Tony Walton in 1959 and divorced him in 1968, then married director Blake Edwards in 1969. She and Edwards adopted two daughters, Amy and Joanna, who were born in Vietnam, and they remained married for more than 40 years until his death from pneumonia in 2010. The family history sits behind the message, but the event itself was about the congress and the cure search she told attendees to join.
